


Hellbane

by Ina MacAllan (inamac)



Category: Ace of Wands
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-19
Updated: 2010-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamac/pseuds/Ina%20MacAllan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is twenty years since Sam Maxted and Lulli Palmer last saw the magician they, and the world, knew only as Tarot. Twenty years in which to forget the danger and the magic. But there are others who have not forgotten. Polandi has a long memory, and Quabal has reason to seek revenge. Together, from the depths of Hell, they come seeking – Hellbane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE - The Ruined Abbey

It was late in the season. The last rags of leaves rattled on the witch-fingered branches of the elms scratching at the slate-grey sky which lowered over the tumbled ruins. There would be more rain before nightfall.

It was late in the day too, but there were still a few tourists about.

The man who rested his backpack against the edge of the ticket booth did not look like the usual sort of tourist who frequented the place these days. For a start he was English, and he did not seem to be carrying a camera, although he might have had anything from a box Brownie to a full-scale cine outfit in that backpack.

The curator made a mental note to keep an eye on this one.

His overlong hair and embroidered jacket marked him as more likely to be one of those hippy 'travellers' who'd caused so much trouble in the seventies down at the Stonehenge site, before they'd put up the barbed wire and security alarms. Not that he looked old enough to have been involved in that business. He couldn't be more than twenty seven or eight. And he didn't look like a troublemaker. But then, they never did.

Although the Abbey ruins weren't as famous as the Druid temple on Salisbury Plain these New Age types had some funny ideas about this site too. Especially since that treasure-trove find of pagan artifacts not far from here had hit the headlines. Dope smoking longhairs seeking mystic experiences weren't at all the sort of thing that Her Majesty's Government, in the form of its English Heritage curators wanted to encourage. Nevertheless he plastered a helpful smile on his face as he moved over to the desk.

"Good evening, sir. Can I help you?"

"I'd like a ticket, please."

The curator glanced at his watch. "We'll be closing in half an hour. You won't have time to get to the top of the tower."

His customer smiled. "That's okay. I'm not very good with heights."

Conceding defeat the man peeled a ticket of the roll. "That'll be two pounds. D'you want a guide book?" (May as well screw this hippy for every penny I can.)

"No. I've been before."

I just bet, he thought, but he kept up the facade. "Oh. Before the site was opened then?"

The tourist smiled again. "You could say that. Yes."

"Right. Well, keep to the paths. They're clearly marked. And don't forget, we close at sunset. You'll hear the bell."

For the first time the curator looked steadily into his visitor's eyes and was momentarily startled to find himself looking into two mirror-dark pupils. He barely heard the man's reply.

"I won't forget."

The visitor shouldered his backpack and strode off down the path, humming tunelessly. The curator watched him idly. There had been something he was going to do...

He shook his head and turned back to his book. Only half an hour to go, then he could close up and go home.

***

The visitor kept his casual pace until he was sure that he was out of sight of the ticket booth. Then he stopped and leaned back against the wall with a sigh of relief.

So far, so good. He was taking a terrible risk, moving out in the open like this, and on a site that was sure to be watched, but he had little choice. There was so little time, and so few of them left, now.

After taking a few moments to compose himself he checked quickly to ensure that he was not being watched and knelt to open the pack. If the curator had been watching he would have thought that his suspicions were justified, for the squat black cylinders which the man pulled out and laid on the grass were not part of a normal tourist's equipment. Although the cylinders looked like the products of an unpleasant twentieth century industry the rest of the paraphernalia that joined them on the grass was more archaic. A roll of embroidered silk cloth, a box of matches, and a slim leather-bound book.

Still working quickly, with the speed of fear of discovery, he unrolled the cloth, revealing a slender knife with an elaborate hilt and engraved blade, a silk cord, a dog whistle, and, wrapped in the tissue in which it had been stored by the British Museum, a silver spoon, swan-necked in the Roman style and with its bowl engraved with the name of one who had been worshipped here long before the Abbey had been built on the site.

He shook his head slightly over the whistle, which was going to present problems. Modern technology could do much to assist such clandestine magical operations but any summoning needed some voice and the whistle presented the least risk.

If it worked.

Checking to see that there were no tourists visible, and that the curator was still in his hut, the man set to work.

Swiftly he inscribed the Circle with the Cord and Wand, touched flame to the contents of each cylinder before placing it at the cardinal points of the sigil, and then stood at the circle's warded centre, the Book in his hands.

The Summoning would be easy. Men had died here. The ground was already soaked in centuries of blood. It needed only one drop of his own, shed with the rune-carved blade, to remind the earth of what it held. And it needed only the Names to call Him, and the whistle to break the barrier.

He began to speak, low, the sibilants drawn out like the sound of serpents sliding over silk.

_"Sirassss Etar Bess..aan..arrr, hear me, Assanar..."_

The Wand moved, cut air, sliced the Veil.

Beyond the ruins the thin low clouds turned to blood, splitting the setting sun like a razored peach.

That was natural. He had timed the ritual perfectly. Who would notice that red light pooled in the shadows? That the soot-blackened stones were, for an instant, dark not with the pollution of the twentieth century, but with the dried blood of the twelfth?

The moment was passing. It needed the Call to fix the patterns.

The magician lifted the whistle and blew.

Silence.

In the distance a dog barked. A deep, farmyard warning.

A terrier yap joined it. But he was listening for something closer. Something without sound.

Long moments passed. He glanced at his watch. Another failure? He had been certain that this site would work. There was so little magic left in this world. Barely enough to Summon a taxi...

He knelt to wrap the remnants of the spellcasting in the cloth; and a cold wind touched the back of his neck, raising the short hairs.

_I... have... come..._

The magician looked up. The voice, slow and deep, reflected the speaker. A dark shape of green and red loomed against the twilight. He reacted to the aura of menace with a sharp, defensive, retort.

"You took your time!"

The air shook with the voiceless reply. _What... do you want... of me._

It was not a question. The magician made a gesture which encompassed the whole of the ancient site, vaults and cloisters, towers and tumbled masonry. The twisted shapes of saplings had thrust through the broken stone pavements, a sweep of dark yew and rowan ringed the ruins.

"Guardian, we wanted you back. The Grove is green again." He hesitated, and the next comment held bitter anger. "Spirit of Earth, where have you been?"

The Guardian lifted his elk-crowned head. Rags of velvet dripped from the splayed antlers into the trailing moss of his robe. Clay-red eyes met the magician's.

_I needed... worship... The Earth... blood..._

"Listen. You have it. Half across the World. Eriu, Gaia, Demeter, Osiris, Cernunnos, Faunus... And as for blood..." he looked suddenly grim, his black eyes were unfathomable, "if you cannot hold this place safely, mine will be the first spilt to wash your kind back to oblivion."

From the entrance the closing bell rang, shrill in the silence.

Soft Autumn rain began to fall.


	2. When shall we three meet again

_"When shall we three meet again..."_

Covent Garden's changed a bit since I was 'ere last. Course, that was, oh, near twenty years ago now. Back then the place was still a fruit 'n' veg market. Smelt like nothing else on earth; wet cabbage and roses. You can still smell the roses, distilled, bottled an' sold at twenty nicker an ounce, but you won't find any cabbages, even in the bins be'ind the restaurants.

One thing hasn't changed, though. It's still impossible t' find a place to park the flamin' van. This was the last delivery of the day and I was trundling around the circuit for the fifth time, casting a cursory glance over the Yuppie-traps crouching in the spaces vacated by the old fruiterers, the green shuttering replaced by smoked mirror glass in which I was watching to see whether one of the reflected time-expired meters might be miraculously free this time, when poetry in motion stepped out of the boutique.

She was wearing a short embroidered chinese silk dress with the skirt slit enough to reveal legs which went right up to her armpits. Her hair, a riot of long curls, was that shade of chestnut which has almost blood-red highlights, and it framed a long, aristocratic face carried on a neck as slender as a giraffe's. In short, she was a knockout.

I didn't realise, until I was almost level with her, that I'd slowed the van to a crawl to indulge in a good long look.

There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I wouldn't have forgotten that figure. Anyway, that dress alone had to have cost a couple of monkeys. She was way out of my league.

I was about to turn my attention back to the road, and the search for a meter-less space, when she turned back to face the shop she'd just left.

I braked hard.

There had been just a glimpse of the look on her face, a look of pure malevolence. As I watched she raised her left hand, which was clad in a long black and red evening glove, and gestured with stiffened fingers at the dark doorway. She said something, but I was too far away to hear the words. And then a lot of things happened at once.

With an explosive 'WHUMP' a fireball exploded out of the shop.

From behind me a polished black Porsche shot out of a side turning, pausing only long enough to swallow the woman before streaking off back to the Strand.

I didn't get the number. I was too busy grabbing the fire extinguisher from the cab. Then I ran.

The sky was full of the clatter of pigeons whirling away from the explosion. There were pebbles of glass underfoot, the debris of a shatter-proof window. All of the force of the explosion had been expended outwards and there was surprisingly little damage inside. I used the extinguisher on the few scattered fires, aware that someone else was using a blanket to smother the rest. By the time the ghouls arrived there was nothing much to see. Even the dust was settling. That was when I finally had a chance to look at the woman who'd been helping to beat out the fires.

"Lulli!"

I hadn't seen Lulli Palmer for twenty years, not since I was last in the Smoke, but she hadn't changed much. She still wore her brown hair in that long sixties style, with the fringe shadowing her eyes and the ends curling onto her shoulders, though it was thicker now, and cut by an expert's hands. And she wasn't quite as skinny as she'd been back then, well, neither am I, but on her it looked good. The laugh-lines round those eyes were permanent now.

I grinned back. "We can't keep meeting like this."

"Sam!"

She brushed the hair back with the edge of her arm, leaving a soot-stain across her forehead. I saw then that she was in shock; her eyes weren't focussed and her skin was white. She looked as if she was going to pass out at any moment. It could've been the explosion, and the surprise of seeing me, but I had a feeling that there was something more. Lulli had always been a tough lady. She'd acted pretty fast to get the fire out, as if she'd almost been prepared for it. I caught her shoulders and helped her to sit down before she fell down.

It was at that point in the proceedings that the cops arrived.

They were very polite, and very efficient. As if they were ready for bomb explosions in Covent Garden every day. And perhaps they were. The bomb squad were right behind them and they were even more efficient. They had orange reflective tape strung round the shop entrance and across the road for a hundred yards within minutes. The shoppers, with the studied insouciance of Londoners, swirled around the cordoned off area as if it didn't exist.

At least it had solved my parking problem. Nothing was going to be allowed to move along that street until the bomb squad had finished. And on past form that would take at least a couple of hours.

As soon as the policewoman had finished questioning Lulli I grabbed her and firmly marched her down the road to the pub.

The old Nag's Head had been yuppified long since, almost as soon as the market had left, but the Peacock's always been a theatre pub and though the front's been given the tourist treatment the public's much the same as it was thirty years ago, and so are the drinks.

More expensive though.

When I got back to the corner by the stuffed peacock where I'd parked Lulli she was looking a bit more together and was studying the faded feathers with an expression of abstraction. I put the martini down in front of her and took a chair opposite.

"So, who was she, Lulli?"

"Mmm...Who?"

"The lady in the red dress who just trashed your shop. I thought she looked familiar. And that stunt she pulled certainly is. I packed enough thunderflashes for Tarot to know the smell of the stuff. The explosion was a nice effect, but there wasn't any chance of damage beyond the cracked window. Is this the old Rachmann stunt?"

"I...I don't know what you're talking about."

I put my own beer down and leaned closer, shutting out the noises from the rest of the room. Just me, her, and a dead bird that wouldn't be telling any secrets.

"Lulli, I'm a friend, remember? I know it's been a long time, but if you're in trouble I'd like to 'elp. Is someone trying to put you out of business?"

She turned the stem of the untouched glass between her fingers. I gave her time. We've had some fairly hairy experiences in the past, not things that it's easy to talk about to strangers. Not the sort of things that a stranger is likely to believe. And I had a feeling that whatever the problem was, it wasn't just a greedy landlord or a business rival.

After a few moments she drank, and her eyes met mine for the first time.

"Her name is Polandi. And she's trying to find Tarot."

Damn. I knew I'd recognised her. Stabs' partner. From the business with the Seven Serpents. But that had been twenty years ago, and the woman still didn't look a day older than she had then.

"Tarot. I might've guessed that if there was trouble brewing he'd be involved somewhere. Do you know where he is?"

"No. I haven't seen him since...since my wedding. If I did know, I'd have told her, but..."

I gave it some thought. "The last I heard he was in Egypt. Saw a press report about him and some guy he used to work with, John...something.., messing about with a pyramid. I would have thought that it would be fairly easy for her to find him. If he's still in showbusiness."

Lulli held out her glass for a refill. She was calmer now, more like the girl I remember, always ready to puzzle out a problem. "I thought of that. I rang the Magic Circle, and that club, The Castle, where they do magic shows. He's still on their membership records, but they wouldn't give me an address."

"He always was damn secretive. It looks like Polandi had the same trouble and thought that a bomb in your place might flush him out of the woodwork."

She smiled for the first time. "Maybe. It didn't work though. I'm glad you were passing." She hesitated, and looked at me thoughtfully. "Why were you there, Sam? It's a bit of a co-incidence isn't it?"

I shrugged. "Nothing odd about it. I run a freight business, usually do the long hauls across the Middle East, but I got back last Thursday and one of the local London drivers called in sick so I said I'd do his round. Got some jewellery for a boutique in the Garden. If I ever find the place."

"Oh, which one? Can I help"

I fished in my pocket for the delivery papers. I glanced at them before I handed them over; and then stopped. They were the usual invoice forms, top copy and two carbons. I hadn't really looked at 'em before, just tossed 'em in the van after checking the address. In any case I wouldn't've recognised the name of the consignee, Lulli was using her married name these days, but I should've recognised the name of the shop. The same name that was on the sign that the bomb squad had just swept up off the cobbles: Ace Of Wands.

"What is it, Sam?"

I handed the paper over, pointing out the address with a finger that, surprisingly, didn't tremble. She looked at it in surprise. "Some jewellery? For me? But I didn't order anything..."

"No. I didn't think you did. I think this was just Ace's way of making sure that I was in the area when Polandi tried her tricks. You may not have been able to find him, but I think he knows exactly where both of us have been for the past twenty years."

That, more than anything else, seemed to reassure her. Her hand around the stem of the glass as she raised it to finish the drink, was rock steady. When she put it down again she was smiling.

"You know I love presents, Sam. Let's take a look at this one."

I tossed off the rest of my own pint and followed her down the stairs. We got some outraged looks from passers-by as we ducked under the tapes, but the cop on duty recognised me and gave us the nod as I opened the back of the van.

I'd left this delivery 'til last on the list, so the box was sitting looking very lonely in the middle of the floor. I hooked it out, checked the address on the label, and was about to hand it to Lulli when the old warning bells rang.

"'Old on a sec."

"What?"

"You've already had one fake bomb today. Let's check this isn't the real thing." I looked around. There was a green army land rover a few yards down the street. Bomb disposal people. I don't believe in taking risks if there are experts handy and whistled one of the soldiers over.

It took them thirty five minutes to open the parcel, and when they had it was something of an anti-climax.

"Jewellery," said Lulli.

"That's what's on the invoice."

"Yes. But I expected...something more personal. This is just junk jewellery. Not the sort of thing I sell in the shop. Look."

She picked out the largest piece. Apart from the fact that it was hanging from a chain it wasn't what I'd call jewellery. A truncated pewter pyramid, crudely engraved, and with a blue chunk of glass the size of a duck's egg cemented to the top. Worth maybe ten quid of any mark's money. But...

"Tarot's a magician," I reminded her. "Misdirection. Sleight of hand. Nothing's what it seems. There was always a chance Polandi, or whoever she's working with, might intercept this. If there's something here with a message it'll be something only you can interpret." I was making stabs in the dark, but she looked convinced.

I looked back at the shop. They'd already boarded up the window and were beginning to sweep up the broken glass and clear the road block. I'd have to move the van. "Do you live over the shop?" I asked.

"No. I've got a flat at St Katherine's Docks."

"Then I'll give you a lift home. We can work out the puzzle there."

She gave me a look which I couldn't interpret. Then it dawned. Oh shit. It had been twenty years.

"I'm sorry, I'd forgotten. Your husband..."

She shook her head. "I should've said. Mike died... a long time ago. I'd like a lift. And I'd welcome the company. After all, we are old friends."

*****

The darkness was not absolute. It was shot through with veins black as dried blood, the pulsing, fear-ridden darkness perceived only by tight-closed eyes in the depths of night. The darkness of horror.

The prisoner's eyes were open. He knew that they were open, could feel the  
movement of stale air over the lenses, the touch of his own lashes moving against the overlong fringe of hair which curtained his face. The tiny sensation was a distraction from the harsher pain of the chains which held him at wrists, and waist and throat.

_"Ds hol-q qaa nothoa zimz od Tau edra llo..."_

It was a whisper in the dark, the last words of a curse. The four thousandth which he had uttered in this place.

He waited.

The silence pressed down. The darkness was unchanged.

Four thousand curses.

Four thousand futile curses.

The sum of a lifetime's research in the dusty libraries of occult knowledge, the temples of forbidden cults, the tombs of the undead...

In Hell.

There was a sound. A muffled handclap. A solo acknowledgement of a performance completed. Then the darkness in front of him split vertically, cut by the gesture of a long-fingered female hand encased in a red velvet glove. The eyes of a serpent glittered over one slender knuckle.

Dazzled, he did not see it. He closed his eyes against the glare, but the voice, mocking, imperious, was familiar.

"Well spoken. The Curse of Agla. I have not heard it uttered for a hundred years."

"To no effect," he said. His voice sounded overloud after the long whispering chant.

"No. It needs the Fire, the Circle and the Sword. Though I understand that there are daemons willing to dispense with such trappings; for a price. And I do not think that you are willing to pay that yet."

"Polandi." He named the voice, his own tone bitter. "Have you come to bargain?"

"I?" She sealed the darkness behind her, bringing only her own faint red aura to illuminate their conversation. It was enough to halo the tumble of her curled hair, not enough to show the limits of the chamber, or any features of the place in which they stood. They might have been adrift in space. There was no sound, save their breathing and her voice. Even the chains were mute.

She reached out. He felt the velvet of the glove cup his chin, turn his face to hers. "Quabal. How long has it been since Melchizidek sentenced you here?"

"Since Tarot sent me here."

It was spoken with all the venom that had been absent from his curses. "Twenty years, on Earth."

"And forty on your face. A heartbeat for every heartbeat you would have stolen from him, a life for a life."

He turned away, to the small limit of the iron collar. "I remember the sentence, Polandi. Have you come only to gloat?"

"No. I've come with an offer of freedom. And revenge."

He laughed.

He threw back his head and, for the first time, the chains rattled. "Oh Polandi. I'd heard you'd challenged Estabbes. Have you now defeated Melchizidek?"

"Melchizidek is a senile old fool. He looks for no power beyond his own Courts. And the Brotherhood has no interest in extending theirs."

"They might show some interest if I tried to leave."

It was her turn to laugh. "You flatter yourself, Quabal. They don't even remember that you are here. The keys were unguarded, the watchdogs long rotted bones. Melchizidek's Hell is empty; save for you. Its last damned soul. Do you want release, Quabal?"

He met her eyes. His own were bleak, expressionless. "On what terms?"

"Melchizidek's terms. A life for a life." She lifted her ungloved hand. A ring of iron keys swung from her fingers. "Tarot's life. You have only to find him, and take it."

"I see. And what profit do you gain?"

"That there is one person less in that world who knows the use of magic. One fewer to thwart my own plans." She leaned forward, her scarlet mouth almost touching his. Her hand caressed the collar, slid the key into the lock.

"Well, Quabal, do we have a bargain?"

His black tongue flickered.

"Yessss"

*****

"Nice pad you've got 'ere."

I knew the moment the words'd left my lips that it was the wrong thing to say.

Lulli laughed. "I haven't heard a flat called that since the sixties."

"Yeah, well, takes me back, doesn't it? We had some good times, back then."

"We had some dangerous times. It still makes me shudder to think about some of them." She crossed her hands to rub at her upper arms. It was a characteristic gesture, one I hadn't realised that I'd missed. And I remembered what it meant.

Lulli was scared.

"Like this business with Polandi?"

She nodded. "Yes. It's stupid, I know. I'm a successful business woman. I've built up the reputation of the boutique over the last ten years; I've had to do some fast talking to the bank to get through the last couple of them, but I can manage, dammit. But seeing her... she makes me feel like I'm seventeen again. She can do things that... aren't natural."

"There was nothing unnatural about that explosion. You could smell the powder. And that's what takes me back. Our old mate Tarot is the key to this little lot. I think it's time we made some attempt to find him."

Lulli crossed the room to the drinks cupboard and poured us both double Glenmorangie's, no ice. She handed me mine and crossed to the big picture window which made a half-circle out of one wall of the room. The architecture betrayed the fact that the place was one of the converted warehouses which had first attracted the developers to the dockyard - pardon me, marina - and the view beyond, of the blue and cream ironwork of Tower Bridge and the stark grey stones of the Tower itself, must have added a few thou to the asking price.

Lulli was right, she had done very nicely for herself over the last few years. She could afford a good drop of the hard stuff as well.

"I... I don't know. All this – the attack on the shop, you - could just be a trick to drive Tarot out into the open. Maybe she wants us to look for him."

I'd been thinking the same thing, but, "Ace c'n take care of 'imself. It's us I'm worried about. That woman's throwing explosives around, and I don't want to be next in the firing line."

"I... " She hesitated, and made a little strangled sound. I thought at first that she'd swallowed too much of the whisky. Then I turned, looked through the window, and choked on my own. The sky over the Tower of London was black with birds.

I'd seen something like it on TV once, and it wasn't that Hitchcock movie, _'The Birds'_. This was worse. Then I remembered. One of those _'Life On Earth'_ things. There's a cave in Texas filled with these bats, trillions of the things, and every evening, at twilight, they come out to hunt. Thousands of flying bodies pouring endlessly into the twilight like a cloud of black smoke. This was like that, but in reverse, and without David Attenborough to commentate. The birds were coming from everywhere. First a few scattered specks on the horizon, then a thickening knot of close-pressed bodies swirling out over the Tower and whirlwinding down onto the focal point of Tower Green.

They were moving so fast, crowding so thickly, that the ones at the centre of the storm could not stay airborne. From a hundred yards up what poured onto the Green was a flood of falling bodies, broken wings, bloody claws, gaping beaks.

The only things flying were feathers.

It wasn't confined to the Green. There were too many. A few of the birds didn't make it that far. There was a thud and crunch of bones as one of the outriders of the storm dropped onto the balcony. Another, exhausted, flying blind, crashed into the window itself, smearing the glass with blood and black feathers. That was when I moved to pull the blinds, blocking out the sight, but not the sounds of the endless wings.

"Lulli?"

She hadn't moved, was still staring at the closed blinds in a shocked trance. I touched her shoulder.

"Lulli, come away."

She nodded, moved like an automaton to the couch and sat, still with her gaze fixed on the window arch. On top of the Polandi business all this had been too much. I hadn't seen Lulli, or anyone else, look like this since she was doing the old mind-reading act with Ace. I sat down next to her.

"Lulli, snap out of it. We've seen weirder things before. You're just out of practice. There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. Too much carbon monoxide probably."

As much to distract myself as Lulli I reached out and touched on the TV. I'd guessed right. They were in the middle of a special report on the event. If it had happened anywhere other than London it wouldn't have rated more than a chuckle at the end of the news, but they'd sent out a reporter who was interviewing some scientist who had a lot of perfectly rational explanations for the phenomenon, and was explaining them at length while the cloud of birds still poured in the background. I wasn't really listening. All I needed, in that isolated room, was proof that we weren't hallucinating the whole thing.

Then Lulli's fingers closed hard on my arm. There was something else in the background. Just another part of the London street scene. A long black car, a Porsche, parked by Tower Hill station.

There was a man standing beside it, tall, well dressed, watching the sight through a powerful pair of binoculars.

It wasn't that which had caught Lulli's attention though.

The car had a passenger. One window was rolled down and, resting on the sill, was a long red-gloved arm with an embroidered serpent coiling down from the index finger.

The camera swung away. But it had been enough to identify the watcher. Polandi. And...

"Was that Tarot?"

I couldn't be sure. The build and the profile had looked like the magician, but it had been twenty years since I last saw the man. And if it was, what was he doing with Polandi? Lulli shook her head, but uncertainly.

"I... I think I'd know. If he was that close. But he knew about this. Look."

She crossed the room to pick up an overlarge paperweight sitting on a side table and dropped it into my hand. "I don't think that this is just a co-incidence."

I looked down. It was the weird pendant which Tarot had sent her, which I had delivered. A truncated pyramid. The stone at its apex was red, though I could've sworn that it had been blue when we'd taken it out of the box. And the engraved decoration was no longer meaningless. In low relief, pacing smugly around the base of the pyramid, a procession of ravens.

*****

The club was tucked away in a basement off Wardour Street, not far from where the old Marquee club had stood in the sixties. It was, in fact, much more like the old rock venue than the other so-called clubs which flanked it with flashing neon and promises of unlikely delights.

Quabal eased the Porsche into a parking space which had, miraculously, opened up as he arrived, and strode through the open door as if he owned the place. Behind him the parking meter clicked over to register a full three hours.

The girl on the door had her hand on a roll of tickets, the other ready to scoop up the newcomer's payment. She blinked and looked up when, instead of the expected twenty pound note, he presented a purple embossed membership card.

"Oh sir. I'm sorry. I don't recognise..."

He leaned an elbow on the edge of the counter and smiled with his lips. She would not be able to tell, behind the mirrored lenses, that his eyes were carbon-hard.

"It's been a long time since I was last here, darling. I must say, I like the change in staff though. Last time the doorman was a big guy. Not as pretty as you." Or as young, he thought. The membership card was older than she was. He wondered, briefly, whether he had made a mistake. It had been twenty years.

She swallowed, intimidated and intrigued at the same time. He hadn't lost his touch then. But she was not so flustered that she forgot her job. She took the card from his fingers.

"If you'll just wait one moment, Mr.," she glanced at the card, "Pentacle."

In fact it was nearly five minutes before the door through which she had taken his card opened again. The man who accompanied her wore a suspicious frown which vanished when he saw the visitor.

"John! It is you. I couldn't believe..." He broke off sharply, aware that the girl was listening.

Quabal nodded. "I've been... detained. Can we talk? I need some information."

"Of course. Come on through."

The big man swept an arm around his visitor's shoulders to guide him into the club. In passing he tossed the girl the card.

"Dierdre, have a new one of these made up will you? Open access." He turned back to his guest. "We've gone computerised now. Bar codes, passwords, the lot. But I'll vouch for you. Where have you been these last twenty years?"

Quabal removed his glasses, blinking in the low light before he turned his cold eyes on his companion.

"In Hell."

In the brief silence they could hear the bump and grind rhythm from the club next door. It reminded both of them that the walls were thin and they spoke no more until the heavy oak door of the club's private inner room had closed behind them. Quabal remembered the place as it had been, a combination of library and bar with a miasma of cigarette smoke, incense and, during his last visit there, marijuana. It had been lively and crowded, a permanent party and, sometimes, something more...

Now the smells were different, muted. The books were locked behind glass, their places usurped by the square, mat black cases of computer terminals. The few people present wore the perfectly tailored suits and perfectly sculpted hair of successful businessmen and women. Exactly like his host, in fact. Their voices were kept as low as the lighting and he noticed that the row of pump handles on the bar had been depleted, the vacant places usurped by ice buckets, some of which contained bottles of wine.

In a spirit of sheer perversity Quabal pulled a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket, extracted one and lit it with a flick of his fingers. One or two of the men sitting at the bar glanced at him with open contempt. He had a feeling that he should have used a silver cigarette case at least, and a lighter.

He took a long drag and leaned on the back of a chesterfield.

"It's changed. Doesn't look as though the carpet's been moved in years. Are the Yuppies members, or do they just pay the rent?"

His host had the grace to look sheepish.

"The world's changed, John. We can't do - that sort of thing - out in the open anymore. But the Circle's still there." He glanced down at the floor.

"Still trying to sweep magic under the carpet? What do they do? Rather raise mortgage rates than demons?"

The taunt produced a flare of anger. "We've been very successful. How many people do believe in magic these days? Everyone believes in profit, though."

Quabal breathed a double stream of smoke through his nose. "A fair exchange.  
But it's magic I'm looking for. Or a magician. My old partner, Tarot."

"He wouldn't come here." It was a statement of fact.

Quabal flicked ash onto the maligned carpet, seeing, with the eyes of memory that burned away the intervening carpet, the charred tobacco falling on the  
inlaid symbol of Thoth.

"Only to close you down. But you should know where I can find him."

"I'll ask."

He would have moved away but Quabal's fingers closed bruisingly on his arm.

"Discreetly."

"Of course." He moved away to the back of the room. Quabal watched him thoughtfully for a moment, until the screen of the computer at which he had seated himself flickered to light, then he ground out the Sobranie on the rump of a bronze centaur and swung his legs up onto the back of the chesterfield. Head flung back over the opposite arm, he waited. He did not have to wait long. One of the women detached herself from the group at the bar and crossed the room to him as if drawn by a magnet.

She was, like everyone else in the room, abnormally tall, six foot even without the added inches of her long stiletto heels. Her hair was copper-blonde, parted in a severe line down the centre of her narrow skull and falling in a smooth curtain over her shoulders. She wore a tailored jacket and straight skirt which, though it covered her knees, was tight enough to emphasise the length of her slender legs. The clothes, shoes, nails and lips were a dark burgundy, the colour of the wine swishing in her glass. The colour of dried blood. It was a colour he had learned to loathe.

She smiled, revealing perfect straight teeth. Her accent, he was not surprised to hear, was a nasal east coast American. "Are you really John Pentacle?"

He closed his eyes. "I was."

"My pop took me to see your act in Delhi. It was wonderful. I guess that was when I got interested in," she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "magic."

Delhi, he thought. It had been a long time ago. She would have been about six. If he'd known that she was in the audience he might have spared himself this trouble now. Sent her up the rope and climbed up after her to chop the brat into little pieces. And not bothered to finish the trick.

He looked at her, lifted the glass from her hand and drained it in one draught.

"Yeah. Magic. Did you ever see my partner, Tarot?"

"Oh yes. But that was just tricks. Stage magic. _We_ know about the real thing."

You know about capering naked round a fake Circle, stoned out of your tiny little mind and being fucked six ways to Sunday by any pervert who can spout gibberish, he thought. Then he smiled, and this time it lit his eyes. Polandi was right. Magic was forgotten here. Melchizidek's court wouldn't find him here. Wouldn't even notice until it was too late. They had only to dispose of those few Guardians who might give the alarm, like those damn ravens on the Hill - let them try to wake Bran now - and the place would be theirs. All that unused Power. Centuries of it, waiting to be claimed. Channeled. He would watch the sanctimonious old fool die in his own bloody dungeon. And in the meantime...

He ran a finger around the rim of the empty glass. A single pure note sang through the room. As it fell in pitch the glass began to fill with a dark red liquid that was not wine.

"Yours," he said, handing it back to her, daring her to drink with his eyes.

This one was a fool. She lifted it to her lips - he could see the effort she made not to gag on the smell - and drank. And drank. And drank.

He wondered, as he swung himself down from his perch to answer his host's summons, whether she understood that it was, indeed, hers. And that the supply was finite.

And he smiled.

*****


	3. In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain

Tarot folded the newspaper and tossed it into the bin. The story about the invasion of the Tower of London by a torrent of crows, rooks and magpies, and the deaths of the Tower's own ravens, had filled the centre pages. Speculation on the cause of the phenomenon ranged from nuclear contamination to doctored birdseed. There were as many theories as theoreticians. But not one had come close to the real answer.

Black magic.

The magician's fist clenched, impotently. He had not expected them to move so fast, to show their hand so soon. He had expected an attack on himself first. If they could find him. And he had had his own plans for the Tower.

They had closed that road now. Even the popular press knew the legend of the Tower ravens; that England would remain unconquered so long as the birds remained on Tower Hill. What they forgot, what they did not realise, was that the conquest the legends foretold was not the aftermath of warfare, of guns and bombs and steel. With the birds gone, who could warn their Master of the impending occult battle? Odin, bereft of Thought and Memory, could render no aid. The Morrigan's war chariots would come late to this conflict. Bran's sleep would continue undisturbed. Even Melchizidek would get no word of his errant courtiers.

Which left it up to him.

He clicked the locks of his case shut with a flick of his thumbs and swung it off the bed one-handed. His eyes took in the room. The newspaper had been the last thing to deal with. NO trace of his presence here would be left after he closed the door. He had grown used to checking carefully these last few years. NO magician could afford to leave anything that might be used against him where his enemies could find it. Not so much as a hair.

He frowned as he closed the door of the anonymous hotel room behind him. He had safeguarded his own back, but there was something more precious that he could not protect. His friends. Sam and Lulli. He had brought them together again, intending to meet them before this, needing their help as much as they would need his protection. He had been so certain that there would be time.

And then, last night, he had seen her on the news report. Polandi.

No longer powerless, no longer trapped. Flaunting the symbol of a serpent-sorceress. The Red Glove. And, by her side, aged by more than years, but still recognisable as his one-time partner, and implacable enemy, Quabal. Dangerous, ruthless, and with no reason to love him, or his companions.

Polandi and Quabal. He knew, as he tossed his case into the back of the car, that they had somehow been responsible for the ravens. He was to late to save the birds now. Perhaps too late to save his own skin. But he hoped, as he put the white E-Type into gear and fish-tailed out of the car park in a spray of gravel, that he would not be too late to save his friends.

And, perhaps, to save their world.

*****

Quabal tossed the sheaf of computer printout into Polandi's lap and slid into the driver's seat of the Porsche. She smiled as he pulled the car away from the kerb, and the hovering traffic warden. The meter clicked to red the instant that the car moved.

"Well," asked the witch. "Did you get anything?"

"Everything there is to get is in that lot. These computers have come a long way in the last twenty years."

Polandi leafed through the printout. Everything these mere mortals know. What of our own knowledge?"

"You'll have to fill in the gaps," he said, turning the car into the flow of northbound traffic. Despite the falling darkness he was still wearing the dark glasses. Not all of the glances given by passing motorists were looks of envy at the Porsche. "I got all that the Circle has on Palmer and Maxtead. If Tarot has an alias their computers don't know it."

The witch looked thoughtful. "I owned the girl once before. Came that close to using her to destroy that meddling magician. But he broke the spell then, and now she is warded."

"Warded and guarded," said Quabal. "This man Sam, might he be a tool?"

She laughed shortly. "A troll has more imagination. That one believes nothing without proof. He has a mind of iron and stone. My flame will not touch it. Tarot could not have found a better guardian for the woman." Her fist clenched, crumpling the papers. The serpent scales on the Red Glove glittered with the movement. "He thwarts me at every turn. He has closed every path to his companions. We'll not reach him by threatening them now."

Her own companion pulled the car to a halt in a narrow, rubbish-strewn alleyway, turned, and leaned an arm across the back of his seat.

"He has closed every path he knows," he said. "But there is one still open. A tool ready to our hands."

She looked into the shaded eyes.

"A lever? What have you found, Quabal?"

He reached down to the abused sheets of printout, ripped off a page and tossed it to her.

"Lulli's daughter," he said.

*****

"Mum! I'm home!"

The sudden rattle and crash of the door, the clatter of footsteps on the stairs, made Lulli drop the pendant. While she scrambled under the sofa to retrieve it I looked up as a small, panda-eyed bombshell burst into the room.

"Hey, d'j'a see those birds? Neat, eh? Bet you had a grandstand view…"

The whirlwind came to an abrupt halt and I had a chance to get a proper look at it.

Not that, static, she was any easier to assess. She must have been about sixteen. As tall as Lulli, but I couldn't say whether the similarity went further. Her rake-thin figure was accentuated by a black leather and lace skirt, a jacket encrusted with jewellery, rings and moons and stars of silver and black enamel over a black strapless basque dripping with jet beads. More silver hung in waterfalls from her ears, rattling against her studded dog-collar choker. Her lips, nails, eyeshaddow and hair were dark purple, like grapes.

Lulli finally found the pendant and got to her feet. She pushed her own hair back from her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I should have warned you. This is my daughter. Peta, this is an old friend; Sam Maxtead.

The girl gave me a thoughtful look, maybe assessing how old, and how close a friend. Then she stuck out a hand.

"Hi. Pleasedtmeetch'a, Sam." We shook briefly, and she jingled as she turned back to Lulli. "Sorry I'm late, Mum, but it's good news. We finally found a rehearsal hall. The guys at Circle City down Soho'll let us have a coupla hours a week. Might even get a gig out of 'em in the club downstairs. I'm starving. Is there anything in the fridge?"

She vanished kitchenwards before either of us could reply. Lulli pushed a hand through her hair and shouted after her.

"There's last night's lasagne. You can heat it up in the microwave. And see that you clean up after."

"'course."

The door banged shut and Lulli winced.

"She's a nice kid," I said, more because I felt that it was expected than because I'd had any chance to work out what she was like under all that punk gear. The brief encounter had left me exhausted. I'd picked up one thing though. "Rehearsals?"

"Peta Palmer and the Pixels. She plays bass and sings. And looks decorative. The clothes are for their benefit."

I grinned. "I bet your mother complained about that seventies gear you used to wear. All tie-dyed vests and paisley skirts. And that damn thong belt of yours that got tangled in everything."

For the first time in an hour the worry-lines vanished from around her eyes.

"Gosh yes! I've still got that belt."

"They say the seventies look is coming back. Maybe you could lend it to Peta."

"Not when she's playing. Remember when I caught it on the lighting unit when we were practicing the vanishing trick?"

It wasn't something I'll ever forget. It nearly gutted our rehearsal room. Ace had done some very fast talking to the insurance company… And it was there that my thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Lulli'd kicked the old grey matter into gear and it was racing hard.

"I remember. And I remember where we were. Tarot's hideout. I'll bet that's one place Polandi hasn't dreamed of looking. I doubt if anyone knows it's there but us."

"If it's still there," she said. "It's been a long time, Sam. He could have sold up and cleared out."

"Only one way to find out." I picked up my jacket. "I'll go and check it out."

Her frown was back again. "Now, Sam? It'll be nearly midnight by the time you get all the way over there…"

"I've got a torch in the van. An' I'm only gonna take a look. If the place is still there, and intact, I'll leave a message for Ace. And you can tell Peta that her rehearsal problem's solved. If Tarot's gonna land us up to our necks in trouble the least he can do is loan the place to your kid."

Lulli still looked worried. And puzzled, as if she was trying to think of something that was just beyond recall. Then she moved slowly to the table, picked up the pendant, and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

"Talking of sending us trouble…You'd better take that with you. I think… you may need it."

I wasn't too sure about that. Ace had gone to a lot of bother to send it to her for safekeeping. But I knew that look in her eyes. It was exactly the expression she'd worn when she and Ace were doing their mind-reading act. And she wasn't often wrong. If Lulli had a hunch, or if Tarot was trying to tell me something, I'd better listen.

"Okay. But you and Peta'd better be careful. Don't open the door to any strangers, eh? I'll call back in the morning."

She nodded. "Yes. And Sam… take care yourself."

*****

As the door closed behind me I regretted not giving in to my impulse to kiss her goodbye. She'd looked so… scared. I could've done with some reassurance meself too. Time seemed to be sliding backwards and we were both acting like nervous teenagers instead of mature adults. I've had twenty years of knocking about in the political hotspots of the world but I still had the feeling that we were going way in over our heads with this. It wasn't a comfortable feeling.

I slipped a hand into my pocket and fingered the bulky shape of the pendant. Maybe Tarot knew what he was doing. One chance to find out. I hopped into the van and set 'er rolling.

The streets around the Tower were empty. The sightseers had left at sunset, when the place closed to the public. Presumably the clean-up squads were at work behind the ramparts but if so no-one outside was taking any notice and I tooled through the City one-way systems with no problems.

This late in the evening most of the lights were set on green and I got from Whitechapel to Whitehall faster than if I'd taken the straight route. After that I found myself in streets that had been very familiar – once. Oh the stores were different, and a few old Thirties brick-built Art Deco blocks had been replaced with Eighties brick-faced Post-modern blocks, but I had no trouble finding the building that I was looking for.

Tarot's old pad.

I didn't think for one moment that there was any chance that he might be here; it would've been the first place that Polandi had looked. But it wasn't the studio that I'd come to see. I found a parking space for the van and picked up the heavy-duty torch and the roll of miniature tools that are kept in a pace where the cops aren't likely to find 'em. Not that I'd use 'em for illegal purposes, but British bobbies can be awkward about what they call 'housebreaking implements'.

Then I locked the van and picked my way to the alley beside the building.

I breathed a sigh of relied at the sight of the rubbish-filled space. It looked as if the local Chinese take-away was still dumpling its refuse here. My torch scared off a couple of scavenging cats, which probably saved them from being on tomorrow's menu, and they scarpered, leaving me alone. I tipped the piled cardboard over, clearing enough space to reveal a heavy iron manhole cover beneath them.

Still here.

It looks like an ordinary service cover, the sort that covers the holes you could trip over any day full of telephone engineers or sewer maintenance men. That was how Ace 'n' I designed it. But it would take a lot more than a crowbar to lift it. It's solid metal, nearly six inches thick, and as difficult to break into as the Bank of England vaults. Unless you have a key.

Fortunately I still did. Kept as a souvenir I suppose. I certainly never expected to have to use it again. The cover was a bit stiff and needed a drop of the old Three-In-One to free the mechanism. The combination lock underneath was more difficult and took two attempts before I dredged up the twenty-year-old mnemonic. Then the door swung open.

With a short prayer that the iron ladder hadn't rusted away I dropped into the revealed shaft and eased the door shut behind me.

Three minutes later I was swinging the torch around to illuminate Tarot's secret rehearsal room.

Apart from the dust, it hadn't changed much in the two decades since I'd seen it last. We'd converted the place from a disused Underground station (all quite legally, Tarot'd had the deeds framed on one wall in case of disputes), and the curved, yellow-tiled walls still carried the well-remembered enamel nameplates. The only straight walls were those at either end which closed off access to the tunnels. The floor sounded alternately hollow and solid under my footsteps as I prowled from the platform to the rail side. We'd set up one end of the area with a small stage for rehearsals and another as a sound-insulated effects studio. That was the gear that Lulli'd nearly burned out with her belt. As good a place as any to start.

There were dust covers over the fixed equipment. I flipped one back and played the torch over a lighting effects panel which was much more advanced than the one I'd breadboarded together for our early shows. The logo was from a company that had only started trading in the mid-eighties. Obviously Tarot had been using the place in the intervening years, which explained why the dust wasn't thicker, and why I hadn't needed a crowbar to persuade the entrance hatch to open.

Apart from the grilled air vents in the end walls, which were sealed in place, there was only one other way in, an iron spiral staircase winding up from a recess in one wall had given direct access to Tarot's flat in the building above. IT was blocked off now, the upper door bricked up and the lower one barred and bolted from the tunnel side. I checked it anyway, but my exploration proved fairly conclusively that, wherever Ace was hiding out, it wasn't here. The only place I couldn't explore was the space under the rail-side of the room, and I knew from experience (just thinking about it raised phantom aches) that the floor stood on a raft of solid timber beams with barely space for a rat to move between 'em, except for the drop space under the star trap on the stage. And that was the last thing I checked.

That… was… the… last… thing…

*****

Quabal pushed himself up against the bedhead and made a theatrical illusionist's pass in the air with his left hand. A lit cigarette appeared between his fingers and he took a long, luxurious drag at it. Beside him Polandi sighed and rolled over, with a slide and rustle of silk and fur.

"Magic," she murmured.

"Mmmm…" He threw back his head and blew a complex sigil with the expressed smoke, watching it rise, writhing, to dissipate against the ceiling. "I learned something in the East. Tantric magic. Even the mere mortals of this world know some ways of tapping Power that aren't in our traditions."

She reached out with her gloved hand and ran a serpent-tongued finger down the long length of his exposed throat. "I should have released you long ago."

He nodded. "Why did it take you so long?"

"Politics." She sighed. "You weren't the only one to be banished by Melchizidek. When I failed in my challenge to win the Black Glove that bastard Estabbes trapped me in the City of Shadows for years."

"Estabbes would never have dared to make his challenge if it hadn't been for the Occult Crisis," Quabal pointed out.

She looked surprised. "You know about that? I thought…"

"It rocked even Hell's foundations," he said.

"Yes." She reached over to take his cigarette, drew on it as he conjoured another one from the air. "IT made for some strange alliances. I made a… deal… with Melchizidek. I helped him to regain his throne in return for the Red Glove. And access to the lands of mere mortals."

"You could have taken the throne for yourself," he pointed out.

"Not without the Ravenstone. And that… that is in Tarot's hands."

Quabal choked. "What! A mere mortal entrusted with the Key to the Gate of Dog?"

"I said that there were some strange alliances made at that time. Both sides were recruiting _anyone_ with the slightest trace of occult powers. I warned Estabbes years ago that, human or no, Tarot should not be underestimated. Even then he had a mind like quicksilver and phenomenal skills. There was always the chance that someone, if not himself, would recognise his potential for Power; and train it."

"And someone did," said Quabal, a bitter tone to his voice. "And now you are planning to leech the magic from his world and take occult control yourself. Polandi, do you think that he, and his companions, will stand by and let you do that? With the Ravenstone they can bar your access to their lands."

She stroked him again, the velvet and snakeskin of her glove warm against his bare flesh. "IT is already too late for that. Our task is already half done. Barbed wire rings Stonehenge, and a dozen other centres of Power. Occult texts have been destroyed, or driven so far underground that they cannot be recovered. Our _magic_ is explained by their _science_, duplicated by their _special effects_, dismissed by their own religious leaders as nothing more than the delusions of deranged minds."

He leaned back in thought for a moment, idly blowing a series of pentagrams with smoke. "Yes. You may be right. The mere humans will not recognise the exercise of real Power until it is too late. But the magician would; and with the Ravenstone he could stop you channelling your own powers into this world – or out of it."

"So we neutralise Tarot first. And for that we must start with the girl."

He stubbed out his cigarette, pulled her closer. "Yes," he said. "We'll deal with her tomorrow. First thing."

*****

The first thing that happened was that the torch went out.

Not that it worried me. It's been knocking around in the van for a bit and the batteries weren't new. I groped for the matches in my jacket pocket, and my fingers closed round the pendant that Lulli'd put there. Useless. I needed light… Then I realised that it wasn't as dark as it should have been. Dammit, the place was underground, and up top it was midnight. There was no way that any light could get in. But there was a glow in front of me, low down, at floor level. Two round, white pinpoints of light like holes punched in black card; like eyes. An' they were getting bigger, coming towards me, growing fast. It wasn't until they were the size of saucers, almost on top of me, that I realised what they were.

The headlights of an oncoming tube train.

I think I screamed.

I dropped the useless torch, and heard it… _squish_, as if it'd fallen into mud or thick slime.

The light was blinding now. I had time to think; this is it, mate, this is what it feel's like to fall under a train; and then it just – stopped. Like someone had frozen the film.

After the first shock was over I thought that that was what it was. I'd tripped some old equipment and this was a projection, something that Tarot'd set up after my time. Something to scare the living daylights out of any burglars. It had certainly scared the shit out of me. And it didn't stop with the train. Even when I saw the – creatures – I was still thinking about special effects. Until the smell hit me.

Putrefaction.

I know they can do some weird things with chemicals these days, but this was definitely the real thing. Rotting meat, wet animal hair, stagnant sewage. The bile was rising in the back of my throat before I even saw the source of the stench.

I stepped back. Tried to step back.

My foot came free of the floor (inch-thick hardboard I'd laid myself), with a sucking sound. I loked down, still half-dazzled by the light from the train, and saw what I was standing on. Backing into. A muck that heaved with a life of its own. A curve of broken bone stuck out of the morass, part of a human ribcage, its cavity filled with a breathing mass of inch-long maggots and, cleaning its whiskers on the shattered sternum, a sewer-slick black rat.

That was when I finally let go of my lunch, Lulli's whiskey, and the two pints I'd had in the pub.

The spew sent the rats scurrying. Up 'til then I was still hoping that it was all some crazy illusion, a house of horrors fairground trick. But there's nothing in Hollywood, and certainly not in Cricklewood Broadway, that could fake that.

And then the sounds began.

I'd been aware of the noise of the distant Underground from the moment I'd entered the place. It echoes right through the system, even the unused parts. The unmistakable rattle of carriages over the points, the hiss of hydraulic brakes, the hum of the air circulation fans, the shunt of automatic safety's being tripped, the buzz of commuter conversation during the day, of the cleaning staff and fluffers at night. This was the same noise; and something more. The screams of the dying, the screech of brakes, the wail of the injured, the endless sobs of the condemned, the mindless scurrying of long-dead rodents.

I knew what it was. With the lights of the hell-train looming over me, the red paintwork spattered with a darker red, the scrubbed aluminium silvered with glowing putrescence, I saw what packed the tunnel around me.

 

These were the ghosts of the Underground.

And I don't believe in ghosts.

Then a skeletal hand, nails grown inches long in death, reached out from the morass and grabbed my ankle.

I felt the dry, gristle-hung bones scratch against my flesh, squeeze closed, pull me off balance, dragginf me down under the train, into the muck.

Somewhere, something… screamed.

I staggered, slashed downward with one hand the hand that held the pendant.

The chain whipped down, trailing sparks of blue fire. Bone cracked in its wake. The claws released me, vanished. The stone of the pendant glowed blue between my fingers as the chain struck the floor, dragged across wood, across the circle of white fire that outlined the star trap for an instant before it gave way under me and I dropped, without time to scream, onto the rusted rails of the old track beneath the stage.

It was like New Year's Eve in Munich. Fireworks. Blinding light. Orange rain. The whole goulish vision flared, exploded, vanished.

It was five minute's before my heart stopped thundering in my ears and I'd regained enough presence of mind to release my death-grip on the rail.

My hands were red with rust.

I looked at 'em for a good sixty seconds before I realised that I could see 'em. There was a light, a faint electric glow from above.

Torchlight. It hadn't gone out after all. Whatever had happened up there had been pure imagination. Nightmare.

I'd have to go easy on the whisky in future.

I stood up, put a hand on either side of the edge of the trap, and started to haul myself out.

"Sam?"

The quiet voice, after the hell I'd just been through, almost gave me a heart attack. Then I recognised it, and the silhouette that blocked the light as he leaned over the edge to offer me a hand out.

"Ace? Where the hell've you bin? We've bin lookin' all over…"

"I know. I got here as fast as I could. Not quite fast enough though."

He looked shaken, worse than I was. He rubbed a long fingered hand over his eyes in a gesture I remembered. In fact he hadn't changed a bit. The same jet black eyes, high cheekbones, wide mouthm dark brown hair. Not even the hairstyle had changed. Not even…

I scrambled to my feet, backing off. There was something very wrong. "Who the hell are you?"

He looked startled. "What? Sam, you know me. I'm Tarot. Remember?"

"Yeah. I remember. The last time I saw Tarot was Christmas seventy-two. An' he didn't look a day older than you do now. So who are you? His kid brother? A clone? Or do you have a picture in the attic?"

He smiled. It was so exactly the expression I'd seen twenty years ago when I'd said something that amused him that I began to doubt my sanity. After everything that had happened tonight I was already a candidate for the funny farm.

"Something like that," he said. "I know it's been a long time. And I _have_ changed. But not," he shrugged, "not physically."

I stared. I was beginning to believe it. Maybe it wasn't me that was mad. Maybe it was the rest of the world.

"What is going on here? Is this some sort of trick? The special effects 've come on a bit since I last worked for you."

"Magic," he said. "And not a trick. Not in the way you mean." He waved a hand over the hole in the stage and the pieces of the star trap rose to fit flush with the floor. I looked for the infra-red beam that his gesture must have broken to trip the mechanics of the trick but all I could see were lines marked out with the red chalk that we'd used for blocking out stage moves. They were scrawled in a circle round the edge of the trap and I didn't recognise any of the letters or symbols. There was a splintered scar which broke the circle at the point where I'd whipped the chain of the pendant across the floor. Tarot – the man who claimed to be Tarot – knelt and touched the spot with his long, clever fingers.

"I'd forgotten about this. I never intended…"

"To scare the life out of me? Where the hell did you find an illusion like that? The Magic Circle's changed since my day if that's what they're sellin' now." I didn't really believe it myself. I'd smelt the corruption. I just didn't want to hear him say it. He looked up at me.

"I said things had changed. That wasn't illusion, Sam. I set this… spell… to summon the ghosts. Anything that disturbed the circle would call them. And when you broke the lines you set them free. If the iron rail hadn't been there to destroy them…" He shuddered. "You've been… we've been… lucky."

I looked at him. He wasn't kidding. But I couldn't believe it, and I said so.

He sat down, lotus-style, on the splintered stage and started reminiscing. Twenty minutes later I was convinced. Of two things. This really was Tarot. And we were in deep trouble.

*****

"This is it."

Polandi tilted her head back to look up at the marble figurehead over the door of the old warehouse building. It was a reminder of the days when the place housed oriental spices rather than oriental computer manufacturers. The woman reached out a gloved hand to press the intercom bell over which Lulli's name was written in faded blue ballpoint. She was stopped by her partner's fingers closing around her wrist.

"You said yourself that they are protected. We don't want to announce ourselves."

Polandi turned to meet his eyes. "Do you think that I'm a vampire, that I need an invitation?"

He smiled. "You would not get one. The girl knows you. She does not know me…" He removed his dark glasses, palming them into the air before reaching out to complete the action which he had forced Polandi to abort. "But," he finished, "she may think that she does." He glanced up, checking that Polandi was out of range of the security camera. Of course, their kind would not show on film – unless they willed it. Despite her comment they shared, with the Weyr-folk, an aversion to silver in all its forms. He knew of one werewolf who had been strangled to death with a roll of Kodak. Security cameras, however, didn't use film. What you see is what you get. Or, he mused, what you _think_ you see…

The doorphone made a mechanical throat-clearing noise which indicated that the bell was being answered. The voice which came through the tiny speaker sounded nervous.

"Yes? Who is it?"

Quabal turned deliberately and smiled directly up at the camera, a smile that creased his eyes, mischievous and delighted.

Tarot's smile.

"I know it's been a long time, Lulli, but I had hoped that you wouldn't forget me."

Tarot's voice.

It had been a long time since he had been the magician's stage partner, since he had studied the mere human's mannerisms enough to duplicate them. But he had not lost the skill. He had fooled the other girl, Mikki, and now he held Lulli in the palm of his hand. This was going to be easy. "Well? Aren't you going to let me in?"

She thumbed the lock open, speaking in a relieved babble. "Oh Tarot! Thank God you're here. I:ve been so worried. After Sam left with that pendant you sent me I thought…"

He halted his stride through the hall, turned and seized her arm.

"Pendant?"

She looked surprised. "Yes. That blue scarab thing, with the engraved ravens. It was you who sent it, wasn't it? Tarot...?"

The Ravenstone. His thoughts were whirling. Polandi had said that Tarot had the Ravenstone. The Key from the City of Shadows into this world. But if it was not in the Magician's hands, but in the hands of these mere mortals… Quabal would have some questions to ask the witch. Later. In the meantime…"You gave it to Sam? Where is he?"

"I… He went to the old rehearsal rooms. Tarot, you're hurting me…"

His eyes burned into hers, red flames flicking in their depths. No longer smiling. Demon's eyes. Seeing into her soul. Holding it. Controlling…"

"NO!"

He was met by something that he had not expected. A matching probe, seeking his own mind. And then, abruptly, shields slammed shut, forcing him out.

"You're not Tarot."

Damn. He swore mentally. Polandi had warned him that the girl had some psi powers of her own, and a link with the magician. That was why she had targeted the child. She was untrained, unshielded. And he had nearly ruined everything.

There was a voice behind him on the stairs.

"Mum?"

"Peta! Get away!"

That was her mistake. In the split second of her divided attention Quabal struck, both mentally and physically, hurling Lulli aside as the child came past him. The girl's purple hair swung as she evaded his wild grab for her. His clutching fingers closed only on one dangling, star-pointed earring, to rip it free with a splatter of blood, hers and his own as the sharp points scored his palm.

His oath this time was half curse, half spell, a summoning of Power which blasted out to strike the girl.

A sudden silence blanketed her but, although her metal-healled boots did not ring on the tiled floor, the doorknob did not rattle under her groping fingers, she kept moving, erking open the door to sprint to safety.

But POlandi was there, to sieze her with a grip that belied the red-haired witch's slender beauty. She was glowing with fury.

"Quabal, you fool, what have you done?"

He caught his breath, spoke through set teeth. "We'll discuss it later, Polandi. We've got the girl. Now let's get out of here."

The witch was already moving, hustling the girl across the street to the place where they had parked the Porsche. She ignored Peta's kicks and struggles. At least the whelp could not be heard. Quabal's spell had taken care of that, and she was grateful that he had had it prepared and ready. In this neighbourhood screams were likely to be answered by private security guards who were much quicker and nastier than the Met.

They had almost reached the car when two more vehicles came careening into the forecourt. A van which took the corner on two wheels, and a white Jaguar, fast as its feline namesake, coming to a sliding, sideways halt only feet from the frozen figures.

Both doors swung back before the vehicles had stopped rocking on their abused suspension and both drivers leaped out simultaneously. Quabal recognised the aura of the car driver at once, and his hatred flared. Tarot. But he was unprepared for a fight and had not expected to meet the magician so soon, and off his own defensible territory. He hesitated.

And it was not Tarot who barrelled into him, but the other man, Sam, who slammed him across the open space with a shoulder charge which had behind it all the force and unstopability of a tank.

A human could not have recovered so quickly, could not even have kept on his feet. Quabal's recovery was so fast that it caught his assailant wrong-footed. Beofre the street-thug could follow through his advantage Quabal had the door of the car open and had hurled himself inside, thwarting Peta's attempts to release herself from the witch's grip.

"GO!" He yelled. The command was wasted. Polandi already had the Porsche in gear and it leaped away before the word had left his lips. He pulled the door shut and watched in the mirror as the tableau of the thwarted magician and his friends receded behind them.

*****

"Damn!"

I turned to race back to the van, knowing that there wasn't a cat in hell;s chance that we could catch the Porsche but needing at least to try. I was stopped by Tarot's call.

"No, Sam. Let them go."

Lulli, who had been standing, stunned, by the door of her flat, rounded on him. "They've got my daughter! You can't just let them go."

I'm sure it wasn't the reunion that she'd envisaged. He crossed to her, took her hands in his long-fingered ones, and looked into her eyes.

"We have to, Lulli. For the moment. They won't harm her, as long as they need her to bait their trap. And there are things that I need to do before I spring it."

"You…" She looked away, following with her eyes the route that the kidnapper's car had taken. I didn't have to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. I hadn't been at all sure that the man who looked so like the Tarot I remembered from fifteen years ago could be the real thing. And Lulli'd just been fooled once by that mate of Polandi's. I don't know what sort of hypnotic hold Tarot had over her, but when she spoke again she was calmer. "I have to do something, Tarot. I can't just… wait."

He put an arm around her and steered her back into the warmth of the flat.

"You'd better call the police. It is a kidnapping, and even if they can't find her they can make things difficult for Polandi. While you're doing that Sam and I have some more work to do before it gets light. We'll be back later. And then we can go after Polandi."

She nodded, and went back inside to make the call. I took the hint and hopped back into the van. I was still exhausted from the mad dash across London, in both directions, but it looked as if I wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. I groaned as Tarot, still bright-eyes and bushy-tailed, locked the door of his pwn car and hopped in beside me.

"Some of us are feelin' our age, Ace. I 'ope you're plannin' ob breakfast somewhere at the end of this jaunt. The Sam Maxted ferry service doesn't run on air."

He grinned and produced a muesli bar from the air. "This shouldn't take long. I want to get to Regent's Park before to Zoo opens. Then, if you like, I'll treat you to breakfast at the Hilton."

"I'll wear me pearls." I put the van into motion, vowing to keep him to that promise.

*****


	4. When the hurly-burly's done

As the Porsche careened through the early-morning streets Peta surfaced to nagging pain in her left ear and a cold, itchy trail of blood pooling along her collar-bones. Before she could reach up a hand to wipe at it she was forestalled. A strange, wet, tickling sensation ran up her throat, circled the torn ear.

There was an obscene eroticism in the action. Involuntarily she shivered and opened her eyes - and screamed voicelessly. It was a tongue. Long, purple, prehensile as an okapi's, rough as a cat's, intimate as a lover's. A tongue so long that she could see its reflection in its owner's mirrored glasses as he licked the last dried traces from her earlobe with demonic relish. She watched in fascinated horror as he ran it over needle-sharp teeth and smiled at her.

"Welcome back to consciousness, child."

Her flesh crawled and, shuddering with reaction, she huddled as far as possible from the alien creature. The spell which had kept her quiet had dissipated and she made up for the enforced silence.

"Jeez. I don't believe this. Who in hell are you guys?"

The man in the mirrored glasses gave her a blank stare as emotionless as the grip which kept her pinned to the seat.

"Yes," he said, in a voice that held a hint of sadistic amusement, "we are denizens of a place that you would call Hell. And that is where we will take you, if you do not... co-operate."

"Yeah? Make me." She took advantage of a long straight stretch of road to release her grip on the doorhandle and fold her arms, sitting back in her seat exuding rebellion. Her mother would have recognised the reaction as one of nervousness but neither Quabal nor Polandi looked beyond the defiance. The couple had other things on their minds. While the witch drove with mechanical precision Quabal turned to watch the road uncoiling in the rear-view mirror. It was empty of pursuit.

"Your bait is not working, Polandi. You should have let me take the magician when he was under our hand."

His partner remained calm. "He will follow, Quabal. When he thinks that he is ready. But I would not have him pick up the trail until I am prepared to meet, and defeat, him. And we have things to discuss first."

"Indeed we have," said the demon. "You were not honest with me, spirit. The Ravenstone is not in Tarot's hands."

"A temporary state of affairs," she said. "And when he retrieves it from his servant he can do nothing with it. You saw me deal with the Messengers at the Tower. Do you think that a mere mortal can call life from a handful of feathers?"

"You told me not to underestimate him, Polandi."

She smiled, showing white teeth. "Yes. And do not underestimate me. Do you not remember that I broke the Circle of the Seven Witches even before I defeated Estabbis and destroyed the power of the Brotherhood? Do you think that a mere mortal dabbler in occult lore can defeat me?"

The eyes behind the glasses were unreadable, but his lips were a hard, thin line. "I do not know, Polandi. But I will not allow him to defeat me again. And I warn you not to stand in my way."

Huddled in the corner of the seat, as far from the sinister black-clad man as possible in that confined space, Peta listened to the bickering with a growing sense of unease. Being kidnapped was bad enough, she still couldn't really believe that it had happened, but being kidnapped by two weirdos who weren't even human... that was scary. And what the hell did they want with her? Whatever it was she was sure that she wasn't going to like it. The first chance she got she'd have to run for it.

Polandi, however, was not giving her any chances. Every set of traffic lights they passed changed to green as they approached, every junction was clear of cross traffic. The woman kept her foot hard down on the accelerator through the whole nightmare ride.

Until the sleek car reached its destination. Even then, as the witch released the locks, Quabal's hand was firm on her arm, closed around the heavy bracelet there. Perhaps it was the silver, perhaps he was still relying too much on his hypnotic powers over her, or perhaps he was still too angry with Polandi to pay their captive the attention which she merited. Whatever the reason, it gave her her chance. As the car door opened she slipped free of both bracelet and restraining fingers and she ran.

*****

"Ace, are you sure about this?" I asked as I pulled the van to a halt in Albert Road by the Zoo's back exit.

He nodded. "It's important, Sam. Polandi and Quabal went to a lot of trouble to make sure that some... people... weren't alerted to their plans. People who I think should be warned."

"Going to rattle a few cages, eh?"

"You could say that," he laughed, and put a hand on the black painted iron of the turnstile gate. "Now, let's see if you're still as good with locks as you used to be."

I took a look at the gate. The padlock would be easy but I'd need some help after that. It was an exit gate. The interlocking bars would only swing one way, and it wasn't the way Ace wanted to go. Still, I was pleased to know that he still had some faith in my expertise. I grinned at him. "I haven't forgotten any of the old tricks. Know some new ones too. Shall we?"

"Go ahead."

I was right about the padlock. I've opened trickier ones with a bent paperclip. About ten seconds later I pulled the chain free of the bars, checked on the swing of the gate, and went back to the van for the wheel-jack and an oilcan. It only needed a drop of lubrication and couple of turns on the jack to raise the gate free of its locking mechanism, after which a well-positioned wrench could hold it in place. The job took all of three minutes and when I'd finished I couldn't resist bowing in a parody of Lulli doing her magician's assistant bit.

"Ta-da. And for my next trick..."

Tarot grinned. "Thanks, Sam. It's much easier with two people. Come on in."

He eeled through the turnstile and I followed. I had time to wonder, as I worked the wrench free and closed the jack to let the gate swing back down to its exit position, how often Tarot'd broken into the Zoo. There had been  
that time, a few years back, when all the owls went missing... I made a mental note to ask him about Ozzie and followed him through the Zoo.

Even when it's closed a zoo is a busy place. There seemed to be keepers everywhere. Fortunately none of them were paying attention to other humans, their concentration was focussed on the animals. I caught up with Ace as he crossed the concrete bridge by the antelope pens.

"Look, Ace, I know it's a bit late to ask, but why are we here?"

He didn't halt in his stride. "I need a messenger."

"You could've called DHL."

That brought a reaction. A grin. "A special kind of messenger, Sam. To take a very special message. Ah. Here we are."

He stopped by the bird houses. The old Victorian cages are scheduled for demolition but this one was still inhabited. A large, black, glossy-winged bird was looking malevolently out through the fine wire mesh which ringed the bottom half of the cage bars. There was a sign, white paint on black, bolted to the cage. 'Danger - This animal bites'. The warning was scarcely needed. The bird's dagger-like beak looked as if it could do a lot more than just bite. It could probably have staked a charging bull, and from the expression in its yellow eyes it was looking for the opportunity to try it.

Tarot passed a hand over the lock on the cage door and it swung open.

"Ace, are you sure that this is a good idea?"

"No," he said, stepping through the open door. "But I don't have any choice. After Polandi's spell this is the last raven left in London. Possibly the last in the country."

He held out his arm and the bird hopped onto it as easily as a trained parrot. I would have been more impressed by his faith in his power over the bird if he wasn't wearing the heavy leather falconer's glove that he used to use to handle Ozzie. There was an intelligent look in the raven's eye which made me think that it wouldn't be long before it figured out that gloves can be pulled off.

Tarot didn't even give it the chance. He bent his head dangerously close to that wicked beak and said something in a language that I didn't recognise, one that didn't even sound human.

"Rawaark!"

I jumped as the bird took off. Tarot seemed equally surprised and he watched it circle the Zoo with an expression of frustration.

"Show off. I suppose that it's too much to expect one of the corvidae to keep quiet about anything. Let's close the cage Sam, and get moving before somebody hears that and decides to investigate."

I didn't really need the warning. I turned back to close the cage door, and stopped short.

Looking at me from a perch in the shadows at the back of the cage was the black nemesis I'd just seen winging its way across the Zoo. It watched with a steady yellow gaze as I pulled the door shut.

"Ace?"

He turned, and I indicated the occupant of the cage. "Wasn't he supposed to be taking a message to someone?"

The magician smiled. "He is. I thought that you, at least, could recognise illusion, Sam, even if the keepers are fooled. I do not want Polandi to realise that she missed one of the Dark Messengers."

That made sense.

I'd wondered why he'd bothered to break in when we could've passed ourselves off as normal visitors, but if we left as quietly as we came there was no chance that this little escapade would get into the papers. I locked the door silently and followed him back across the Zoo.

*****

It was still early enough in the morning for the streets to be relatively deserted. Those few people Peta passed ignored her, looked away, pretending that the sight of a punk girl running for her life was an everyday occurrence in the city. Nothing unusual.

Perhaps it was.

She dared not stop, to ask for help from those carefully blank unseeing faces. Dared not look back. She could feel the pursuit, a crawling sensation up her spine.

They had uncanny powers, magic focussed fine as a needle between her shoulderblades. Even this flight could be a trick...

She stopped thinking. Concentrated on moving fast, on slapping one foot in front of the other, on missing the unevenness of the paving stones, knowing that if she fell, magic or no, they would be upon her.

She crossed one road, swerved at a second, where the lights were against her, using one hand on the pole of the traffic light to spin around it and plunge across, praying that the green would show before her pursuers reached the  
crossing.

She dared not look back. This was a shopping street and her image stroboscoped in the darkened windows as she passed, a ghost-twin pacing her while demons followed.

Right. And right again. Across cobblestones designed to slow pedestrians, up onto a marble fountain's edge, time to wonder whether the witch could cross water, a flash image of her purple hair caught, like Tam o'Shanter's mare's tail, in the woman's red-gloved hand, no time to try it.

When mum had talked about magic she hadn't meant this.

Had she?

Her breath was catching now, a stabbing pain at the base of her throat,  
chest burning as if every rib was a searing white hot finger crushing her heart.

Run.

Turn.

Dodge.

Run.

Run.

She was no longer certain whether she could hear the pursuit, her laboured  
breath was too loud in her ears.

Then she slowed.

Stopped.

She had reached an open space. And she recognised it. A piece of the country in the city's heart.

Wind-tossed plane trees encircled a tiny black-and-white timbered building. There was close-cropped grass underfoot. She might have stepped out of the demon's hell into a fairy tale. Handsel and Gretel.

Soho Square.

The studio was around here somewhere.

She could phone from there, get help.

It took all her strength to take the next step, and the next. To regain her momentum. She skirted the space and turned up the familiar street. She couldn't remember the number, but there would be a sign. Black letters on grimy white glass lit by a single bulb jutting out at first floor level.

This was Soho. There were dozens of signs, red and purple and yellow; flaked paint and flickering neon, faint and tawdry in the early morning light.

Follies. Flash. Follies.

Nite. Klub.

Strip. Flicker. Strip. Flicker. Strip.

Flash. Knight.

Girls. irls. rls. ls. s. . Girls.

Night. Club.

Stud... io.

That was it. Circle City Studios. A skyscraper in a black circle.

She staggered forward. The door under the sign was open.

Someone waiting there, a dark shape against the red light from within. As she drew level the stranger grinned.

"Full circle, kid. Welcome to the Club."

Someone moved up behind her, reached out a hand to hold her.

She looked down at the serpent-embroidered glove that circled her bare wrist.

And fainted.

*****

We got back to Lulli's place not a moment too soon.

The cops 'ad left, making empty promises, and Lulli was wearing a hole in the carpet. The level on the whisky bottle was a lot lower than when I'd left it the night before.

She stopped her pacing when she saw Tarot and for a moment I couldn't be sure whether she was going to hit him or hug him. After a long silence she did neither.

"Whatever you two've been doing," she said, "I hope it was worth it."

"I hope so too." As usual, Ace wasn't holding out any false hopes. It wasn't what she'd expected and she turned away, her voice tight with anger.

"Damn you. I thought you were going to help."

It was up to him to make the move. I didn't expect it, but he did, stepping round the coffee table with its half-empty bottle to take her shoulders in his hands and turn her to face him.

"I've done as much as I can. The next bit depends on you."

"To do what?"

"To find Peta."

Maybe he'd used the 'fluence on her. She was a lot calmer when he let her go. He turned to me.

"Sam, have you got a good map of London and an up-to-date A to Z?"

"There's both in the van."

"Get them. Lulli, we'll need something of Peta's - some hair if you can find her brush, or some jewellery."

"I..."

She gestured at the table. There was a star-shaped earring lying next to the glasses. "She lost that... when they took her. I found it... in the hall..." Her voice was close to breaking. Tarot took her hand, folded his own around it to stop her shaking.

"Good. And some hair?"

"I'll see..."

I left on my own mission. By the time I got back the table had been cleared and Ace was stringing the silver earring onto a long strand of purple hair.

I dropped the maps on the table. "Going to try a bit of the old dowsing?" I asked.

He smiled.

"Something like that. But I don't think that Lulli will need to do more than concentrate on this. She's already attuned to her daughter, and she's done this sort of thing before."

"A long time ago," Lulli said, doubtfully.

"'slike riding a bicycle," I reassured her.

"I haven't done that for years, either," she said. "What do you want me to do, Tarot?"

"Just think about finding Peta." He picked up the South East map and spread it out on the table, weighing one edge with the bottle, the other with our glasses. Then he picked up the pendulum, let it swing on its fine hair cord. Lulli watched it, fascinated. She fell back into the old routine of magician's assistant like clockwork.

I wasn't as confident about it.

"They were driving a Porsche, Ace. They could be half-way to Scotland by now."

He shook his head without looking round, his whole concentration on Lulli as he handed her the pendulum. "If we need to go to a bigger map then we can. But I think that they are in London. They have to be."

I shrugged and went to look out of the window. I never did like this psychic stuff. It's not predictable. But Lulli trusted it and I wasn't going to argue.  
Mind you, Tarot doesn't take chances. He had Lulli run that pendulum over the map a dozen times and every time the vibes came up with London as the answer.

It wasn't anything dramatic. I've tried it myself and didn't get a thing, but Lulli says she gets this... shiver when the marker's in the right place. I've never known her to be wrong, not when Tarot's using the 'fluence, but like she said, she was out of practice.

When he was satisfied about the general location he picked up the A to Z and riffled through the pages, letting the book flip through his long fingers. I turned from the window to watch. I half expected it to vanish like a pack of cards.

"Now," he continued, "tell me when to stop."

Lulli watched too, concentrating on the flip, flip, flip of the pages. He went through it three times before she said 'stop'.

The West End. The pages covered the rectangle of land between Oxford Street and The Strand, north and south and from Carnaby Street and Seven Dials east to west. Sixties chic to Eighties nouvelle vogue. It was more or less the area that I'd driven the van around looking for a parking space at the start of all this malarkey. If Polandi and her partner had their hideout in that area it could take us months to search it.

Unless Lulli's dowsing came up trumps.

This time I watched as she passed the strung earring over the pages, trying to see the jump that indicated Lulli's 'shiver'. I didn't, but she told Tarot to mark two places, one on the corner of Leicester Square and one in Soho Square. They didn't mean anything to me, but Ace looked grim.

"Again."

She shivered. "It's not working, Tarot. It doesn't feel... right..."

"Polandi and Quabal aren't 'right'. They'll try to cover their tracks. You've already done better than I expected. Now, just once more."

She picked up the pendulum again, held it between thumb and finger to let it dangle and twist over the well-thumbed pages. Like I said, I'd given up expecting anything spectacular so I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

The earring was spinning, like a yo-yo on a twisted cord, faster and faster, until the pointed shape became a blur, a sphere and, as if it was the bit of a fire-drill, the paper below it began to smoke, to char. Then the whole book   
burst into flames.

"No!"

I didn't see what happened next, I was too busy getting the metal waste-bin over the top of the fire. Waste was just about the shape of it. We wouldn't try that again in a hurry.

I didn't realise I'd spoken aloud until Tarot replied.

"We don't need to. I know where they are now."

"I thought you said they'd cover their tracks," I indicated the up-ended bin. "That was a pretty impressive demonstration."

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. Reminded me of that Quabal chap. "When a fox takes to the water he still leaves traces on the bank. We have some muddy footprints to follow, Sam, straight into a very old earth."

"Soho," said Lulli. "Peta said that the band had found a rehearsal room in Soho."

I remembered it. "Circle City. But it would be too much of a co-incidence..." I stopped. Tarot looked grim.

"Where Polandi and Quabal are concerned I do not think that anything can be regarded as co-incidence." He picked up the strung pendulum from the floor where it had fallen and closed his hand around it with finality. I remembered the gesture, recognised it.

"There's something else, isn't there, Ace?"

He nodded, reluctantly. "Something I thought, I hoped, had been closed down years ago. Circle City wasn't a studio then. But the name's the same. And if it's still there we have less time than I thought. Polandi won't have to open a new path to her... place. There is one set up already. A gateway straight into... hell."

Lulli stood up. She no longer seemed shocked, just very determined. "Then let's go and stop it up."

*****

Peta was unconscious for only seconds; long enough for Polandi to haul her upright with unhuman strength and push her through the door into the Club's narrow reception room. The sound which roused her from her faint was the thud of a closing door and the rattle of its security lock.

Trapped.

But in a place her mother knew about. There was a chance, a faint chance, that she might be found. Rescued. She clung to it, and watched through mascara-sticky lashes as Quabal confronted the manager of the place, a man that she recognised. With whom she had signed a contract not twenty four hours before. It seemed that he had signed another form of contract, years before, and was about to regret it. He looked as frightened as she felt.

"John... Mr. Pentacle... You can't..."

Quabal pulled off his glasses, looked down at the sweating human with eyes which literally danced with flame.

"But I can. You have played on the edge of the Pit for years. Did you really think that the Brotherhood set this Circle here merely for the amusement of your thrill-seeking clients? It was a Portal made for our convenience, and we need it opened. Now."

"But..."

Polandi, her fingers still twisted in the girl's hair, pushed past him, raised her free, gloved, hand, and spoke, fast but commanding.

"Polandi's Hand, Polandi's spell,  
Prepare the Way to nether Hell."

The man's eyes glazed, more than merely hypnotised by the gesture. He might have been a zombie as he turned to lead the way to the inner room.

Polandi's spell seemed to have affected more than the Club's manager. Although it was still early, nearly midday, the bar was open and the most exclusive members had access to the inner sanctuary of the place. They were mostly draped over the chairs in soporific oblivion, half drugged, half drunk, wholly enchanted.

As the quartet entered twelve of them rose to their feet, puppets jerked by the witch's strings, and watched her with dead eyes. She smiled, and turned to Quabal.

"They do not change, these creatures. Infinitely stupid, infinitely corruptible. Envy, greed, lust. They are ours already. We need only to take their world."

"If Tarot will let us."

Her smile became grim, predatory. "Oh he will let us. When he is rotting in my deepest hell. Him, his friends, and," she shook the girl by her hair for emphasis - Peta gave a half-scream of pain - "This bait." She turned back to  
the club owner. "Well, prepare the Circle."

He nodded, hurried past her to the computer desks against the far wall where he activated a series of controls. At the command dark silk curtains glided from the walls, concealing the desks and bar. Chairs and chesterfields rolled aside, some still carrying their human freight. It was a scene reminiscent of a transformation of an American Speakeasy during Prohibition. But the furniture was not replaced with the innocuous trappings of a Temperance Hall. Four of the enchanted men and women rolled the black carpet aside to reveal a circle of engraved brass, twenty feet across, enclosing a pentacle set into the black marble floor. Chains of age-blackened metal descended from the ceiling, carrying human skulls in which fat black candles burned with a sulphurous stench. A trapdoor opened in the floor to disgorge an altar of rough-hewn stone, its surface an inset block of close-grained oak, scared like a butcher's block with deep cleaver groves and stained with rusty bloodtrails.

Polandi took in the setting with a contemptuous glance. "They have imagination, these mere humans. When they have opened the Gate for us they might prove of use, if I need to do some... redecorating."

Her partner, impatient, pushed past her, opened the box which he had brought with him from the car, and dropped the bloody corpse of a raven onto the altar. With practiced movements he crucified it, hammering the long bronze spikes into the solid oak as easily as if it had been polystyrene. When the gruesome task was done he turned back to step into the pentacle's centre.

"They have kept the Knowledge alive for us, and the circle intact. What matter to us if they need other symbols for their calling?"

Quabal gestured with the hammer, indicating that the Club owner, and the twelve acolytes, should take their places at the points of the pentacle.

Unbidden, Polandi pulled the girl to join him in the centre.

The ritual began.

"ZAZAS, NASATANADA, ABYSSUS-DRACONISUS! Thee I command, by the Blade of Barzai, with the Incense of Zkauba. Let the Ninefold Gate be opened and the Abyss Gate unchained. By the Ninefold Affirmation I abjure thee! NRRGO, IAA!  
ZENOXESE, OXAS-PTOITH!"

The response was fast, faster than any human mage could have expected.

Quabal had scarcely finished naming the Powers when black smoke began to boil up from the glowing lines of the symbol. As it did there was another sound, from beyond the room. The sound of the locked door being opened.

*****

It was midday when we arrived. I could hear the automata on the clock in the Swiss Centre striking the hour. It was very faint and didn't hide the noise we made picking the locks on the door of the Circle City Club. The bells hadn't stopped when we opened the door and fairly charged into the place. The outer office was empty.

There was a second door which Ace tackled as if it was the lion's cage in the Zoo and his best mate was being eaten. It opened towards us. Beyond was a black curtain. I dragged it back, expecting to find some sort of bolt-hole.

I would've dropped it again if Ace hadn't been helping.

It was a hole. A hole in the floor of the room, bounded by a glowing red circle and by a group of robed people who looked at us with shock as we entered.

For a moment I thought they were going to jump us, and I didn't think I could take on all twelve of 'em. I'm out of practice, and they looked really mad; in every sense. But I needn't have worried. Tarot held up the pendant he'd brought. He said something I couldn't hear. Blue light shot out of the stone and the robed figures backed off as if they'd been blinded. I ignored them and turned back to take a look at what was happening in the centre of the circle.

It was filled with a boiling mist and in the middle of it, like an island in a lake, was a truncated pyramid, a huge duplicate of the one in Tarot's hands, at the summit of which, instead of a scarab, was a pair of massive golden doors. They were closing. I caught only a glimpse, but I could've sworn that before the double doors crashed shut I saw Peta's dead white face looking back at us.

So did Lulli. She screamed her daughter's name, nearly deafening me.

"Peta! No!"

Tarot pulled her back before she could step into that billowing mist.

"Wait." He glanced down at the pentacle on the floor which surrounded the object. Red light was still flaring from the lines, casting our shadows out, flame-edged, across that writhing morass.

"This isn't an illusion, Lulli. That's the Gate of Dog. It's one of the entrances to Hell."

"Really?" I said, hoping I didn't sound as scared as I felt. "Where's the sign?"

Tarot picked up the reference. "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" he intoned, in a voice that was meant to be ironic.

I might have felt better about it if the special effects hadn't looked so awfully convincing. I glanced at Lulli, knowing that, sign or not, we didn't have a choice.

Lulli looked as nervous as I felt. She swallowed hard. "Can we get in?"

Tarot hefted the pendant in his hand. Its blue light was glowing, a searing actinic blade of brightness that cut across the dull red mist like a sword.

"I can get in," he said, in a tone which left doubts about whether he could ever get out again unspoken.

Lulli caught his arm. "She's my daughter. I'm coming too."

"Makes three of us," I agreed. We'd come this far, I wasn't going to let Ace tackle this alone. Besides, we're none of us teenagers any more.

He looked at us both. Maybe he was reading Lulli's mind. Perhaps he just recognised and remembered our plain stubbornness. At any rate he didn't argue.

We stepped forward into the mist.

My insides twisted like the aftermath of chasing a Nebucanezzar of wine with a bottle of very bad whisky as we crossed that glowing red line. Dizzied, I put my foot down on the light from the pendant and discovered that it was solid enough to stand on, a bridge that extended as we walked it. Tarot had been right about opening the Door too. As soon as the light touched the lowest step of the pyramid the double gates parted, opening on absolute blackness. Sam, me lad, I thought, as I took the step through, you're a real nutter. This is s'posed to be Hell.

Hell...

It was more like Margate.

In the darkness I could hear the seashell sound of the sea, and a voice, high and harsh as a seagull;

"That's the way to do it! That's the way to do it!"

As my eyes accustomed to the darkness I saw exactly what I expected. Right down to the red and yellow belled cap, nutcracker nose and chin and outsize club.

Mr Punch.

Flat under our feet.

We were standing on the only surface that the place afforded, a playing card the same shape and size as the ones we'd once used as a backdrop for some of Ace's shows back in the old days. I'd seen them stacked against the wall at the back of the rehearsal room. If this was a nightmare, maybe that was the source.

But those had been nothing more than painted props. On these the figures shifted and spoke, acting out a story as old as the pack, the rest of which was fanned out below us in a huge spread like a gigantic double Hollywood staircase. Far below, diminished by distance, I could see three figures, red and black on a moire plain. Polandi's voice carried in the darkness.

"It's your own choice, Tarot. See if you can find your own road into Melchizidek's kingdom now!"

She turned, and vanished, leaving the challenge hanging in the air.

Beneath our feet a whirl of sausages spilled out of the pasteboard as the bells on Punch's cap jangled furiously. Lulli looked down at the shifting patterns below us.

"It's a tarot pack," she said.

Ace nodded. "Yes. It seems I was expected. I said Polandi has no imagination."

He looked down at the spread pack. There were three more cards below this one, all with moving figures. I couldn't see what was keeping him, and I said so.

"This has to be the Fool. If it's the first card the next step should be..."

Lulli'd seen it too. "The Magician. Over there."

Tarot pulled her back as she was about to step down to the next level.

"Wait. Is The Fool the first card - or the last? It's a zero, Lulli. No number. Both the start and end of the sequence. I do not think that Polandi would make it so easy for us."

"Well we can't stay 'ere all day," I pointed out. The sausages were reminding me that I 'adn't 'ad any breakfast, except for Tarot's museli bar, an' lack of food does nothing for my temper.

"You got any better ideas, mate?"

He closed his eyes, thinking aloud. "The Fool is the close of the circle. He walks on the edge of the precipice, between the material world and the worlds of the mind. This path leads from the material world. A link with magic. And the last link is the Magus. So the first step should be..."

He did not even open his eyes as he took it.

The World. A human figure in a spinning wheel of leaves and foliage, flanked by zodiac creatures, a lion, a bull... and the sounds that broke from it as we stepped down were earth noises, the grinding of rocks, explosion of volcanoes, thunder of herd animals... the soundtrack of every natural history film ever made. I never heard Ace pointing out the next card, just jumped, with an eagle snapping at my heels... And landed in an open grave.

The sound that came from this one was a trumpet. A single, endless note. The Last Trump. Only it wasn't. There were another nineteen to go. It took an effort of will to step down onto the Sun. Blazing heat and light that almost obscured the rest of the pack.

After that it was easier, just a matter of remembering the major trumps in reverse order. I've never paid much attention to all this New Age guff but you couldn't've lived through the sixties without picking up some of the mumbo-jumbo and both Lulli and Ace knew 'em like the backs of their hands.

Not that it was a joy-ride. Like the first four the surfaces of the cards shifted and moved beneath our feet, emitting scents and sounds that were damn near impossible to ignore. They weren't all taken from one pack either. Some of the designs were so stylised they were almost unrecognisable. Towards the middle of the pack things got distinctly hairy and by the time we reached The Magus I was jumping at shadows. I would've hit the roof, if there'd been one, when the red-robed figure under our feet spoke.

"Who comes? Who comes to the Hell of Melchizidek?"

The voice was old, and it echoed. I didn't fancy meeting its owner.

Ace held up the Ravenstone.

The pendant was glowing again, giving light enough to see by. I wished it wasn't. There were things moving on the edge of the darkness. For the first time I stopped looking for the special effects machinery. Even Cronenberg couldn't think up anything like that. It was easier to assume that they were alive. Rubber and Kensington Gore have a completely different smell.

It didn't seem to bother Ace though. He was looking down at the face beneath his feet. The light from the Ravenstone made a mask of his features, black hair framing black, fathomless eyes.

"You know me, Melchizidek. I do not come to challenge you. I ask only free passage. Two of your servants have stolen my companion's child. I have come to take her back."

The old man lifted a hand to his shoulder, stroked the raven that perched there with a serpent-gloved hand. His voice sighed, echoed. "Yes, I know you, Hellbane. You see, your little messenger reached me. I had time, a little time, to prepare. The Red Witch and your Demon Twin have made their own Hell, they no longer have access to mine. If you can take what you want you may do so. I will not protect them. But you know the Law. You may take nothing from this place that is not rightfully yours. Now go. I grow weary of these petty squabbles."

The image vanished, as if switched off, and we were standing on solid ground in a circular room with a vaulted ceiling and a door between every set of pillars.

*****


	5. When the battle's lost - and won

For Peta and her captors there had been no stairway down into the pit, no hellwalk. There had been the Circle, the Invocation, and then...

She had been thrust with an abruptness sudden as birth into the searing bloody darkness that was hell.

Polandi had screamed. A cry of pure fury, and of denial.

"NO!"

The word echoed into nothingness.

Quabal looked around. They were standing on a plain of black granite, fissured as if it had been struck by a gigantic hammer. The cracks glowed red and orange, the liquid lightning of molten lava flowing beneath a shattered surface no thicker than a sheet of glass.

"This is not the City of Shadows," he said, a trace of amusement behind the blunt statement.

Polandi was not amused. She rounded on him. "This is your doing, Quabal. Your damned human sorcerers can't even draw a simple power sigil."

"NO, POLANDI."

It was another voice; not loud, but heavy with years and with power. The sound filled the plain from horizon to horizon.

Beneath their feet the glowing cracks moved, reformed themselves, flowed to form eye-searing symbols far more complex than the ones that had been etched on the floor of the Circle City Club. And at their centre a shape formed, rising from the plain like the cone of a slow-forming volcano. A brazen throne. Its occupant, a man grey and aged with more than a mortal span of years, leaned forward, his gloved hand curved over the human skull that formed the end of the chair arm, to pin Polandi with his reptilian gaze.

"You were ever quick to blame others for your errors, spirit. Did you think that I would not notice your intrusion?"

"Frankly, yes," the witch muttered under her breath. Fortunately a hoarse cry smothered her words as a ragged chunk of blackness broke away from the throne and swooped over their heads, cawing avian laughter. Polandi swore.

"You were warned," she said, aloud. "Tarot found a messenger."

The ancient voice was stern. "I was warned, yes. Did you think that you could destroy all of my spies? You have found yourself in hell before for your presumption, Polandi." The yellow gaze turned to her companion. "And you, Quabal; have you learned from your imprisonment? Have all these years not taught you the futility of trusting Our subjects? Did you lose your wits with your mortality?"

Quabal's hand clenched, and blood ran from a talon-rent palm. "I lost years, Melchizidek. And I will have revenge. On you, and on the bastard Tarot."

The figure on the throne made a dismissive gesture. "You bore me with these petty threats. You will not meddle in the affairs of the Brotherhood again. The doors of the City of Shadows are closed to you. Forever."

The presence withdrew; the throne sank as it had risen, drawing rivers of fire after it, leaving the three standing on a seamless, midnight plain. It was done with lightning speed.

As the last of the red glow flowed into the distance Peta caught her breath.

"Wait! What about me? I'm not with these people. I don't belong here!"

The glow brightened.

"I HAVE NO CLAIM ON YOU, HUMAN. YOU ARE FREE TO GO."

And was gone.

She almost screamed at the darkness.

"Go where?"

Quabal's voice came, still amused, from behind her, "She has a point, Polandi. It seems that Melchizidek has trapped us here."

"Us, and them." The witch looked up to where a spinning DNA helix of gigantic playing cards was dropping through the darkness. She flung her challenge to the watchers above before seizing Peta's arm again, dragging her across the moiré plain.

"That old fool is not so clever. The Ravenstone could crack even his defences. And he left us the bait. Where she is the magician will follow. On to my territory. If we cannot get justice in the City of Shadows we shall get revenge in my hell."

There was a rustle of silk as she raised her hand, gestured into swirling darkness.

"Polandi shall no longer roam,  
For my hand Power shall take us...   
Home!"

Thunder smashed the darkness. White light blinded. When Peta opened her eyes again it was with trepidation. She expected fires, darkness, demons, devastation, the gamut of hell images from Heronymous Bosch to Stephen King. She had not anticipated the Beatrix Potter cottage with its thatched roof, candy-twist chimney, oak beams, whitewashed walls and pretty-print Laura Ashley curtains. Its very quaintness was sinister.

"Where... where are we?"

"Hell," said Polandi, unlocking the door with an overlarge brass key. "One of mine. And this is my house. We may have some time to wait. Tarot may be following me, but I have not made the path simple."

The girl scarcely heard.

She was still staring in amazement. "But..."

The witch laughed. "The darkness and the fires of your myths are for the damned, for mere humans. Not for our kind." She glanced at her companion, "or not ordinarily, eh, Quabal?"

He ignored the jibe, did not even appear to hear it. He crossed the room to close the curtains, shutting the fire-limed night behind the leaded windows out. When he turned back his expression was grim.

"I want his eyes, Polandi. I want his blood."

"And I want the Ravenstone."

His fist clenched. "An you shall have it. Wrapped in Tarot's living guts."

Even Polandi recoiled from his vehemence. Peta shivered, not at the words, but at the tone. Emotionless. A statement of absolute fact. As she had done in the car she sought refuge in defiance. She dropped into a stuffed chintz chair.

"What did this guy do to you?"

The witch raised her hand as if to strike the girl to silence. Then she paused, spoke softly to herself, "Well, why not? There is time while we wait. And when she leaves - if she leaves - she will remember nothing of this."

She lit the fire in the grate with a single gloved gesture and sat down in a wicker chair with pretzel-knotted rockers on the other side of the slate inglenook. Rocking slowly she spoke.

"We are old acquaintances, Tarot and I. When Stabbs sought the secret of the Seven Serpents I warned him about that meddling magician. Stabbs would have succeeded, had Tarot not fooled him into betraying us both to the Brotherhood. Stabbs was twice a fool, for believing a mere mortal, and for thinking that I would not challenge him after that."

She paused, turned to Quabal who was absorbed in pouring a drink from a crystal and silver claret jug. The black liquid steamed as it entered the goblet. When he did not respond she continued her tale.

"But I did. Before Melchizidek's empty throne I challenged him again for possession of the Black Glove. I would have won, too." Again she glanced at Quabal. "I had his promise of aid."

That brought a response from the dark man. "An old promise. What influence I had with the Brotherhood was lost. In Egypt. Tarot thwarted me there. And when I returned..."

"When you returned the Cardinals had a prison prepared. Did you not think that they would make you share my defeat as you might have shared my victory?"

He nodded, sipped the steaming draught. "I knew the price of betrayal. I never thought the Brotherhood would value the life of a mere mortal."

"They might not," she turned back to the girl, "There was a crisis breaking. The Gate of Dog had been breached, Melchizidek returned to his throne, and all Earth might have been let loose in Hell. Both sides were recruiting every hedge-wizard, crystal-gazer and ghost-hunter they could find. Tarot's name was already known to the Brotherhood. He has powers, and they taught him how to use them well enough for him to earn a Name in their courts. But I never thought that they would let the Ravenstone out of their hands."

Quabal refilled the goblet. "They claim that it was stolen. Some of these human mages are less trustworthy than demons."

The contempt in his tone drew a retort from the girl.

"And you can be trusted?"

"To take revenge, and protect our own, yes. We are an ancient race, girl. Older than you can imagine. Heaven and Hell and Earth were ours once, as was the Ravenstone. It was made by our kind. Tarot has no rights to it. And when it is back in our hands again..."

"Yeah? What'll you do then? Start the third world war?"

"The thirteenth," said Polandi, looking into her defiant eyes. "The third was the battle that destroyed the dinosaurs. The tenth was lost on the plains of Camlan. Now we will do what Melchizidek might have done a thousand years ago. What we have been doing by stealth for decades. We shall take back your world and use it. Use it as we cannot use our own. Drain its life and power for our purposes. Squeeze it dry."

"And then," added Quabal, "we shall discard it."

Again Peta shivered, despite the proximity of the fire. "Tarot's beaten you before. You said so."

"On his own territory. But this is my Hell. He must play by my rules. You heard Melchizidek. He has withdrawn from this battleground. There will be no help for your magician friend from that quarter. And I will not be taken in by his tricks."

Peta turned to stare into the fire. Her thoughts were bleak.

But will he be taken in by yours?

Oh mum, where are you?

*****

I can't say that I found the old boy's comments very reassuring. There we were, stuck in the middle of nowhere, ringed by doors that might lead anywhere and without so much as a map or a native guide. And there was no sign of Polandi. Or Lulli's kid. But we did have Ace.

Remembering that trick of his in the old station made me feel better. If he could conjure up a few of his own scaries to back us up we might still get out of this. I said as much, but he shook his head.

"We're on Polandi's territory, not mine. The demons here serve her. I had hoped that the Brotherhood might help."

"Then there's only one option," said Lulli. "Give Polandi what she wants. You've still got that pendant. Trade it for Peta."

He looked at her. I hope I never have to see that expression on any human face again.

"I have something that Quabal wants more," he said, bleakly. "My life. I would trade that for your daughter, Lulli. But not the Ravenstone."

"No." Lulli fairly screamed it, and Tarot grabbed her hand as she raised it to strike him, held her still while he spoke.

"I can't let her have the Ravenstone, Lulli. It's not mine to give. A lot of people died to get it away from Stabbs. In Polandi's hands it would be a thousand times more dangerous."

I don't think that she heard him.

"Peta's my daughter, Tarot. If you don't care about her then I do."

She moved so quickly that neither of us had a chance to stop her, even if I'd wanted to. She yanked the chain out of Tarot's hand and barged through the nearest door.

It slammed shut behind her. Only her shout hung on the air.

"Polandi! Polandeeeeeee."

Tarot was looking at his chain-burned palm with an expression I couldn't read.   
Shock? Or satisfaction? I clapped him on the shoulder.

"You should've known better, mate, trying to reason with a lioness defending 'er cub."

"I should never have brought you both here," his voice was bleak. "I've been away too long."

"Yeah. Well, the damage is done now. Let's get after 'er. I just 'ope that you've managed to keep a few more tricks up your sleeves 'cause I don't think that Polandi's going to play fair on this one."

"No." He smiled. "Let's hope we can surprise her, eh? Now, which do you think is the right door?"

It was only then that I realised that I couldn't identify the door through which Lulli had fled. They weren't identical, but neither were they constant. Lulli'd gone through something arched and studded and medieval. None of the doors looked like that now. And they were receding; not as close as they had been. The circle was opening around us and in the blackness between them and us...

Something paced, growling.

"And fast," I said. "'Sounds like your magician's loosed the dogs."

Ace shook his head. "Not Melchizidek. That is Polandi's guard. At least now we know which door leads to her Hell." He started to walk towards that growling. I wouldn't have followed, except that there was no way I was going to stand around that place in the dark on me tod. There was a glow coming round the edges of the chosen door. A red light that I didn't like the look of at all. I liked the look of Polandi's guard dog even less.

Now I like dogs. Once travelled right across Turkey with a stray mutt who picked me up at the port and acted as passport and bodyguard right through the mountains. But Arfur'd had only the one head. This beast had three; a long, sly hound's head with a gaze that could strip your soul; a squat-nosed mastiff's face, jowls dripping saliva over a trapdoor jaw that would never let go; and a grey wolf-muzzled face, red eyes glinting with the implacable intelligence that had herded generations of sheep to their pens - or to their doom. A tongue twice the length of that muzzle hung, dripping, over sharp yellow fangs for three heartbeats before Tarot spoke.

"Cave canem," he said, very softly.

"Beware of the Dog." I whispered back. "Yeah. I don't think much of your sense of humour. How do we get past that without losing an arm an' a leg?"

"Easily enough. It's been done often before."

"Only if you're Barbara Wood'ouse," I said.

Ace looked briefly baffled. "Who?"

"After your time. Besides, I don't think that blowing up one of those noses is gonna 'elp."

"It's a question of what you blow up their noses," he replied, reaching into his coat to pull out a box that I'd've sworn was too big to be concealed. He took a breath, and opened it. A stench rolled out.

Heavy, bloody and rotting. Dead flesh.

I filled my mouth with my tongue in an effort to stop retching as Tarot lifted out the contents by the taloned scaly feet. It was the corpse of one of the Tower ravens, the one that had been staked in the circle in the clubroom. I didn't know when he'd picked it up, or why. Unless he'd suspected this.

I glanced at Cerberus. Knowing dogs I'd expected the beast to be practically on top of us trying to get at the rancid meat, but it was standing statue-still. Only the hound's eyes were looking at us. The other heads, deceived by the scent and taste of death, were blind.

Tarot started walking slowly past the beast, swinging the corpse under the guardian's noses. I followed, very close.

"It guards against the entrance of the living, Sam," he explained, softly. "Anything that looks dead, or smells dead, or tastes dead, can walk past."

"Right," I agreed, as the darkness swallowed the beast behind us. "So now we've got the right door, 'ow do we get in? I've tried cracking the odd safe f'you but I don't think I'm up to breaking 'n' entering Hell."

I might've known that a little thing like that wouldn't stop Ace. He smiled.

"Getting in has never been difficult, Sam. Especially when the combination for the lock is written on the door."

He ran fingers around the frame, cracksman-careful, then stepped back to look at the obstacle. It wasn't an ordinary door. The thing was encrusted with carvings and weird symbols. Just looking at it made me feel as if me eyeballs 'ad been dipped in slime and I wouldn't've touched it with a twenty foot bargepole, even under normal circumstances.

But these weren't at all normal.

After far too long a pause he took a deep breath, placed both hands flat on the carvings, and said something. It was a single word and it sounded horrible. It also seemed to go on forever. I understood why he'd needed the air, I was holding my own breath before he'd finished, willing him to get it right, whatever it was.

The door swung open.

He pulled me through before I could get a good look at the place. It was just as well that he did. Half a second later it slammed shut again behind us. I felt the air move, but when I turned there was nothing there, just an empty grassy plain, bathed in the same bloody glow that had filtered round the edges of the Door, a plain that stretched in both directions, exactly the same behind us as in front.

"At least it's light." I said, with some relief. "We'll be able to see where we're going."

Tarot pointed ahead.

"That's where we're going. Let's hope we're in time."

He set off across the grasslands towards a slowly coiling column of smoke in the distance. He can still move, I'll give 'im that. I keep meself reasonably fit (you never know what you might run into on those long desert trips), but I was breathing hard by the time I caught up with him.

Not that it took long. We'd barely covered a mile maybe, before we came to the source of the smoke. Polandi's house.

I skidded to a halt; scarcely believing what I could see nestled between two low hills and surrounded by a riot of summer flowers.

"It's a bloody gingerbread cottage!"

Ace grinned. "You should have realised by now that demons have no imaginations, Sam. Everything here was stolen from humans. From nightmares, dreams and legends, and..."

"Fairy stories. I just 'ope she 'asn't got Lulli's kid in the oven yet."

"She hasn't," he said, "Look."

It was getting darker. It wasn't like a sunset, more like the effect of a theatre director fading down the spotlights, leaving only an even crescent of radiance which illuminated the cottage and the area for about a hundred feet beyond it. Enough for us to be able to see Lulli running ahead of us and to outline the three people whose shapes emerged against the yellower light from the doorway.

Lulli's voice sounded unnaturally loud as she raised the pendant.

"I've got what you want, Polandi. Now give me back my daughter."

Tarot's hand on my shoulder stopped me moving any further. He whispered, too low for the others to hear: "Be ready. We'll only have one chance at this."

I nodded, very quiet. It was like waiting in the wings for the show to start. There was a stage out there, in front of the cottage, and this performance might be Tarot's last. I whispered back, "Break a leg," and caught the flash of a nervous grin. We waited on the cusp of the light. Behind Polandi her partner was holding Peta. He dragged her forward, ignoring both the witch and the woman. He raised his voice, spoke directly to Tarot as though he could see him, despite the fact that we were concealed by the darkness.

"Tarot! If you want the girl back, come and ask for her yourself. We don't deal with mere humans."

Ace stepped forward, into the light. His own voice was quieter, barely audible by contrast. "Then you should not deal with me. You were never consistent, Quabal. Lulli has offered you the Ravenstone. What more do you want?"

"You."

It was a snarl. Peta winced, whether from the vehemence, or because his hand had bruised her arm with its fiercer grip I couldn't tell, but there was no doubt about Quabal's anger.

"You owe me twenty years, magician. You won't leave here until I have them. With interest."

"Let my friends go. Then we'll talk."

Polandi laughed. "First, the Ravenstone." She darted forward and snatched it from Lulli's grip with her gloved hand. Lulli jumped back as if the touch had burned.

Perhaps it had. I smelt sulphur even from this distance.

Through it all Ace hadn't taken his eyes from Quabal.

"A deal," he said.

The demon laughed deeper and longer than Polandi. Then he made a sweeping gesture, drawing all our eyes with the movement. In the next instant he and Peta were standing in a circle of flame, a pentacle like the one I'd been trapped in - was it only hours ago?

"As you see, she is Bound, Hell-brother. If you want to set her free you'll have to replace her. Write your true Name in the Circle instead of hers."

There was a long pause. I felt Tarot, beside me, draw breath and lift his left hand slightly, his fingers flexing. It was the gesture he'd always made before staging a really dazzling trick. Gaining confidence. Preparing to stun the audience. And a prompt to me to get the effects ready. But he only had an audience of two here. And they were using real magic. How could he fool them?

"If I write a Name in your Circle, Quabal, it will be the one the Brotherhood gave me. Hellbane. Do you think that this little hell of yours will stand where the City of Shadows could not?"

Silence.

For a moment the bluff, if that is what it was, worked. Quabal looked nervous. Then he rallied and spat at Tarot.

"You had help, little half-wizard. Always help. Here you are on your own. The bargain stands. I'll have your Name, and your blood before I release her."

I felt my own fingers curling into a fist almost involuntarily. If Quabal so much as set a finger on the girl we'd see how his magic could deal with a mouthful of knuckle.

It was an impasse. A standoff. It was broken by a laugh.

Peta's. She pulled free of Quabal's grip and faced him inside the Circle. The red flames made a skull-mask of her white-painted face. She looked more like a demon than he did at that moment. But there were tear-trails in the mascara and her voice was higher than normal, cracked with fear - and courage.

"Don't I get a say in this, mate? I never told you my name. I may not know much about this lark, but I've read the right books. I'm not stupid enough to give my real name to a magician."

"No," his pointed teeth gleamed, "but you are free enough with your machines.  
You fool humans keep records of everything, even your names. I had it from a computer, Petronella Palmer."

She laughed again, and this time there was no trace of hysteria in it. Her expression was absolutely confident as she faced up to Quabal. It's more than I could have done at her age. Having seen what his sort of magic could do I'm not sure I'd risk it even now.

"Sheesh, you really fouled this up, didn't you? That's not my real name. It's a stage name, Mum's maiden name. The one I booked the band's rehearsal rooms under. That's where you got it from, didn't you? From that rat at Circle City? You never found out about my real name. The one my dad gave me."

And she jumped.

Fire ran along the thread of the pentacle, flicked over the twisted symbols on which she had been standing, unravelled them and wiped the circle clean.

Quabal screamed, burning as the fire consumed his own sigil, searing his soul.

When the flame cleared there was a black space in the pentacle, and Peta was standing outside it, in the circle of her mother's arms.

"Peta, if you ever do that again..."

"It's cool, mum. I could handle it."

I let out the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding and stepped forward meself. "Ace? Let's get out of here."

He ignored me. His attention was on Polandi who had dragged her partner from the circle before the fire consumed him wholly. I can't say that I was pleased about that. Neither, from his expression, was Quabal. Despite the burns, his flesh black and crisped where the fire had touched it; he stood alone, glaring at Ace.

"If it takes Eternity, mortal, I will have your Name."

The witch slapped him with her gloved hand. "Forget Tarot, Quabal. He is nothing, he and his little human friends. If we will it, we can destroy his world. What does the life of one more half-wizard matter when we have the Ravenstone?"

Ace smiled. As if he had been waiting for the cue his right hand moved, fingers flickered...

"But have you, Polandi? Or is this the real Ravenstone?" He tossed the duplicate pendant from right hand to left. "...or this?...or this?" and juggled three, so fast that the blue scarabs blurred into a wheel of shifting light. "Which one, Polandi?"

The witch screeched, lifted the Stone she held and gabbled a long string of syllables. I could've told her that it was a mistake to take your eyes off of what a stage magician is doing even for an instant. She didn't have time to finish the spell before Tarot had stepped closer to her and, with a movement that I'd been expecting only because I'd taught him a few pickpocket tricks meself; he added the pendant she held to the spinning procession. Blue light crackled between the four spinning pendants. Then he crushed the plastic and foil of the replicas together over the real stone, obliterating the light.

The next instant all four had vanished.

The magician spread his arms and bowed, the traditional gesture that ended the show. Neither Polandi nor Quabal applauded. Not that he'd been expecting it. As he straightened up he caught Lulli and Peta's hands in his and tipped me the wink. "The show's over. I'm sorry if you didn't enjoy it, but we have to leave. Now."

My cue. I triggered the thunderflash. It was the last of the illusions we'd ferried back from the old hideout. I'd warned Ace that, after the long time in storage all we were likely to get would be a damp squib, but it worked like a dream. The last thing I heard, as we all dived for the cover of the darkness, was Quabal's threat.

"There are other Gates. You haven't won, Tarot. I'll pour your blood on the Altar of Erzuli."

And then Tarot held up the Ravenstone, the real Ravenstone; and we dropped through black feathers and out of Hell.

*****

"So it wasn't real magic," said Peta. "It was all illusion."

Oh the scepticism of youth.

We were back at Lulli's place. The sun was shining, the noise of traffic was filtering up from the street below, and Lulli was pouring coffee.

"Illusion 'n' bluff," I said. "Don't knock it, even illusion can kill. And what Polandi and Quabal were up to - that was real enough. Eh, Ace?"

"Oh they were real. That was why I had to use illusion. A lesson for you Peta. Never fight an enemy on his own ground with his own weapons." He smiled. "Or hers."

Lulli handed him a mug of coffee. "She's not going to fight anyone, Tarot. With or without magic. It's back to college for you next month, my girl. And no arguments."

"Aw, Mum." The panda-eyes were huge over the cradled mug. "You said I could take a year off if I got a job."

"If. And playing guitar for one evening a week at the local pub isn't a job."

It sounded like the start of an old argument. I finished my own drink and started to sidle to the door.

"This is a proper job. Sort of. Tarot's asked me to be his assistant."

I closed the door on the ensuing argument. I'd already played that record through with Ace meself when he offered me the old job back. Now I had a van to load. I checked in my pocket for the keys to the old station. A bit of a dust and the place would be like new. Like I said, a lot can change in twenty years.

But sometimes the wheel turns full circle.

*****


	6. Epilogue - In Hell

It was midnight. The witching hour. And the witch cast the runes, wove the spell, bound the circle. Fire flared, limned a doorway. On her side: hell. On the other...

A clear crescent moon burned in a sky grey with the lights of a distant city. Below, darker against the glow, the shapes of trees tossed in a strong wind, sending the last dry leaves of autumn skipping around the broken teeth of ancient ruins. The witch watched for a moment, but nothing living moved among the rubble. She crowed her triumph. "I told you, Quabal. Not all the Gates to the land of mere mortals are locked. Not all need the Key of the Ravenstone. Even Melchizidek has forgotten this one. Do you still think that upstart Tarot can defeat me?"

Quabal did not speak; had not spoken since his last words to his enemy. With the witch he stepped forward, passed across the threshold, felt the cold winds of the human worlds on his unhuman flesh. There was something more than mortal in that wind. He shivered, reaching with occult senses to identify the intrusion. A sense of something here as alien as themselves, and far, far older. The witch sensed nothing. She was still laughing her triumph when the shadow rose against the ruins, took her in hands older than Time, bound her with roots stronger than iron and sent her howling back into eternity.

Quabal had an instant longer, a second to recognise the elk-crowned head, the scent of earth and blood and green growing things, of mould and rot and fungus, to see the pooled implacable eyes of the Guardian, the Lady of the Earth, the Lord of the Grove, and to curse his enemy for calling it here before the earthy arms closed around him.

It was his four thousand and first curse.

And his first.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on a TV series that aired between 1970 and 1972. It is set some 15 years later (1988) and was written in 1991 and first published in March 1994. In coding this for electronic archivation I have not altered the original text, (apart from some spelling and punctuation corrections). It therefore reflects the attitudes of the characters and of the times. And the technology. No mobile phones, no internet, no 'Starbucks'. The terrorist activities referred to are the IRA bombings of London in the early-80s. The London Underground had not been subjected to bombing (since WWII) but had experienced two major disasters, at Moorgate in 1975 and the Kings Cross fire in 1987.
> 
> I have drawn from the (lost) episode _Seven Serpents, Sulphur and Salt_ and the _Dramarama_ play _Mr Stabbs_, both by Trevor Preston, the third season episode _The Power of Atep_ by P J Hammond.


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